Darkness Before Dawn
by anvreder
Summary: The choice between good and evil should be clear cut, but with Dean's life hanging in the balance, Sam finds himself caught in the twisted web of destiny.
1. Chapter 1

**Darkness Before Dawn**

**With Sam firmly under the demon's thumb, the only thing that stands between him and oblivion is Dean. Shadow AU.**

* * *

**Devil's Tower, Wyoming**

"_'Why does the lamb love Mary so, Mary so, Mary so? Why does the lamb love Mary so?' the little children cry."_

John had always said that Wyoming was his favourite place to visit. He took Mary there once- before her belly grew round with Dean- and camped under the stars south of Devil's Tower. They'd cooked in mess tins left over from John's service days, and drank beer chilled in the blue and green cooler Mary had packed in the trunk. Maybe that was where little Dean had been conceived, the demon wasn't quite sure. All he did know was that Wyoming was really the perfect place to be. It was the _only _place to be. Winchester must have his own brand of foresight, or else fate really hated the poor bastard- Devil's Tower?The man was asking for trouble.

Weather was warmer than usual for summer. Muggy heat punctured by freak thunderstorms that were driving the locals in herds to the local bars for a cool Miller's after work. The height of August saw temperatures rise to eight degrees higher than the previous year. However, there, in the root cellar, things were blessedly cool.

And dark. Meg had blacked out the small windows with the black masonry paint she had found in the garage. She'd also ripped out the wiring for the only electric light in the room. Small, dark, and minus any clutter, entering from the sweltering heat of the kitchen was like stepping under a fountain of water after crossing Arizona.

"Why does the lamb love Mary so?" The demon loved nursery rhymes. There was something dark and sinister, and vaguely morbid about them that appealed to the lighter side of his temperament. Only humans could compose songs about tragedy and teach them to their children. _Ring a ring of roses? _A classic. "Come on, Dean. Sing with me now. Do _you _know why the lamb loved Mary so?"

Being neither alive, nor dead, the demon had no difficulty seeing through the darkness around him. The human he kept locked down there wasn't so lucky.

Chains rattled lightly. He'd grown up with that sound. First in the halls of Tartarus, where real torture was an art, and he had grown to see the human race for what it was; weak, pathetic. Hopeless. Then in the mortal plane, in Sasania, where the dungeons of Ctesiphon swelled with the fallen Byzantine soldiers abandoned to the bitter eastern horrors they had whispered about over blazing fires. The Islamic state had not been so fond of such blatant and traditional torture, preferring to use more inventive methods. The demon had stayed, for a while, as stability frayed around conquest and invasion, before moving onto the Christian states.

The students he had had there… So willing to do God's work, and so sure that true devotion was shown in blood and tears. His love for the clang and rattle of chains had born the vigour and might of the Inquisition, where fire and metal tore and violated their way to _justice. _To _righteousness. _He missed the good old days.

"Come on Dean. It's not hard. Tell me, little lamb. Tell me why you loved Mary so."

A few months ago, and he could have counted on the spitfire he had captured to keep him wildly entertained with backchat and bravado. He had learned more curses in the last three months than in several thousand millennia amongst man. Dean had been refreshing, at first. And so much fun.

Now he didn't get so much as a _fuck you_ for his troubles.

The demon crouched alongside his captive, pleased when a flinch and a shuffle proved there was still some spirit let to break.

Three months in the dark and bleached the human of his golden skin. Chains and Meg's idea of suitable rations had ensured that no matter how wilful the kid's spirit might be, he wasn't up to any McQueen like efforts.

The demon had watched _The Great Escape_ twice since coming to Wyoming, and wished he had spent the war in Europe instead of South America.

"No?" Dean flinched wildly when the demon shuffled forwards and pulled the human half into his lap. The kid was smart, though. He'd learned which battles to fight, and didn't put up more than a token resistance when the demon stroked his hair in a fatherly manner. "I'll tell you why the lamb loved Mary so." He leaned forwards and pressed his lips to Dean's ear. The human needed a haircut. Sharp teeth nipped Dean's ear, and he whispered words like a great secret. "Because the lamb was too dumb to realise that no matter how much he loved the bitch, she didn't give a shit about him."

The demon laughed wildly, even as Dean slammed his head back into his captor's jaw. The blow lacked any real force, and probably hurt the human more than it did him. "That's my boy. Still in there. Good. I was getting worried. We don't want you dead before daddy finds you. What's the fun in a family reunion if brother Dean isn't there to enjoy it."

"He won't come." The words had been said a thousand times already. Each time the conviction in the human's voice slipped from cold assurance, to a quiet desperation. He wondered if Dean still believed them, and what it meant if he did. A question for later.

"Of course he is, big brother." The demon whispered wickedly. He happened to know that daddy was tearing apart the country in the hunt for his boys. "He'd come for me. You both would."

A shuddering gasp left Dean's throat. "You're not him. You're not Sam."

More words. Spoken even more often that the previous three. It was the only conversation he really got from Dean any more. The kid needed to change the record. He was getting boring.

"I am Sam. Sam is me. We're just one big family." He pulled Dean closer, grasped his chin and forced the human to look up into the face of his kid brother. "I'd have thought you'd have figured that out by now." The demon had discovered long ago that Sam's voice could convey disappointment better than most. "Still. It must be a Winchester thing. Dad's still no closer to finding us. Perhaps I should give him a little nudge, whaddya think?"

Dean couldn't tear his eyes away from Sam's. They were still the same light colour they had always been. The demon was smart enough to keep them that way. He'd hulked out on the kid once before, regained his natural golden eyes, and Dean had just flipped a switch. The more Sam looked like Sam, the more it fucked with Dean's head.

The demon leaned closer. He caught Dean's face between one hand. Held him still. "How about an eye? Hmm? Such pretty eyes. Just like mommy's. No? Maybe I'll send Meg after one of our friends then. Pastor Jim maybe? Caleb?"

"He won't come." Dean rasped again. The demon's hand came away sticky with blood. He shook his head in disappointment.

It was to be expected. The kid had made it to the front door this time before being caught. He'd once made it all the way to the end of the drive before the Daevas had dragged him back.

He was good, he'd give the human that much.

Still, the demon had promised Meg that she could take care of Dean if he tried to escape, and she had never been any good at taking care of her things. One would have thought that the first time would have been enough to put the human in a more accommodating frame of mind.

It hadn't.

"Don't try to run, Dean. You can't leave me here alone." The demon whispered, enjoying the shiver of pain that ran down Dean's spine. Feeling strong enough for a fight, the demon seeped into Sam's mind, into his untapped psychic potential, and hotwired a ride into Dean's subconscious.

For the most, Sam slept through the demon's occupation of his body. It was easier that way, for the both of them. The demon needed Sam whole, and the youngest Winchester was possible more volatile than his older brother was. The only time Sam ever stirred to consciousness was when the demon used his abilities to have a little fun with Dean. There was always a fight, but he had never failed to win one yet. Sam backed down with only a little persuasion. A hand around Dean's throat tended to do the trick.

Dean whimpered as memories were unleashed in his mind for the both of them to see. Arguments between father and son were the demon's favourite, closely followed by the shotgun incident. That had been a little gem to uncover. Forcing Dean to relive that memory had done more damage than any physical violence. It was just as shame the handgun hadn't been loaded. Such a shame.

Just like Sam. The kid still hadn't learned his lesson. Whilst Dean curled in on himself in the demon's arms, Sam kick started into reality, seeing through his own eyes, and unleashing a barrage of curses that would have made big brother proud.

The demon's hand, _Sam's hand, _curled around Dean's throat, and the battle ended before it had really begun. The youngest Winchester sank back with a cry in to the recesses of him mind. Dean stifled a sob as the memories crashed over him in waves, and in the darkness, the demon began to sing again.

"_Hush, little baby, don't say a word. Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird…"_

* * *

**Manning, Colorado**

It was an unwritten rule that hunters did not turn on other hunters. Professional courtesy, right there along side the line that said first come, first kill, on a hunt. Still, no one was particularly surprised when John Winchester took two handfuls of checked cord between his hands and lifted Daniel Elkins clear off the ground.

It was a miracle the man had restrained himself for as long as he had. Winchester was not known for his patience.

"The gun, Daniel." Winchester snarled. He was about ready to start shooting people, and this man stood between him, and the thing that could save his sons. "I won't warn you again."

Elkins bristled at the treatment. "Damn it all, John, I told you I don't-"

"Lie to me and I'll break both your legs." John hissed. At one time, he had considered the man a friend. But friend or no, nothing was going to stand between him and his boys.

They had been missing for close to four months now, and at first he had wondered if their silence was their way of showing how pissed they were at their own, similar treatment. Leaving them in Chicago had hurt more than he could possibly have imagined. So much so, in fact, that at times John whished he had never shown his face in the first place.

"I don't have the damn gun." John slammed Elkins into the wall, to jog his memory.

Six weeks passed without word. Even when John had walked out on Dean to follow the demon's trail alone, his eldest had still followed the same rules of their hunt. He called in once every week. A _'hi dad, we're still alive, and where the hell are you now?' _that Dean had never expected to be returned. His voicemail picked up one message after Chicago. One 'hi dad', and then nothing.

"My sons could be dying, Daniel." John roared. It hurt too much to think about. They were supposed to be safer on their own, away from his influence and the danger that followed. He pulled back in order to deliver another wall shuddering slam, when a woman appeared in the doorway.

Missouri Moseley held a wooden box in her hands. She met John's gaze unflinchingly.

"Normally I wouldn't encourage this type of behaviour." The dark skinned woman said crossly, tipping her head towards the study in a way that showed her displeasure at being forced to use her skills for illegal, unethical means. "John Winchester, you put him down now."

John was used to following orders, and Missouri was a woman used to giving them. Elkins slid to the floor gracelessly. He looked up from behind tangled, sweaty grey bangs. "You can't just take it." He said, seemingly ignoring the fact that he had only moments ago denied possession of the box and it's contents. "If that gun falls into the wrong hands-"

"It was made to kill evil. Guess what I'm going to do with it!"

John's phone rang, cutting Elkins' response off before it could begin.

"Winchester."

_"It's me."_

"Jim." John seemed to relax slightly. "Tell me Caleb came through for us."

_"He seems to think Ellen is possessed, but he is convinced of Ash's credibility. The boy is running the information for you was we speak."_

John thanked his friend quietly, his voice catching as hope rose in his chest. Ruthlessly, he quashed it, knowing that false hope would only lead to bitter disappointment. John had called on contacts in every state. Obits had been scored, morgues searched, hospitals and prisons torn apart. There was no trace of the Winchester boys. It was as if they had stepped into another world, and left no evidence behind them. Even the car was missing.

During the short phone call, Elkins climbed unsteadily to his feet. He glanced uneasily between the hunter and the psychic before sighing and deflating under Missouri's stern glower and John's tense posture. "What do you plan on doing with it?"

John crossed to the doorway and took the box from Missouri without so much as a thank you. He checked the contents. "I plan on finding my sons." He said. "And when I do, I am going to kill the son of a bitch that took them."

TBC

"**Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.****" **

**-**Terry Pratchett b.1948

This is my first foray into a darker side of fan fiction, so please, drop me line and let me know what you think. Too dark? Not dark enough? Feed the author!


	2. Chapter 2

"**And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?****"**

_Ok, so Sam really hadn't taken the whole spoon in mouth thing too well. Little brother needed to lighten up, he'd been nothing but bitchy since Chicago. Yes, so perhaps Dean had undone half a years worth of effort when he told John to take off, but seriously, he was sick and tired of being the bad guy. What happened to the family mantra? Do as dad says, and don't blame Dean for it!_

_Ok, so that wasn't the family mantra, but next reunion, Dean was adding it to the rule book. _

_Hot coffee scalded his fingers as Sam thrust a Styrofoam cup into his hands. He tried counting to ten and got to seven. The coffee was too hot to enjoy, but Dean drank it all anyway, scrunched the cup and rounded to glare at his brother._

_"Ok, seriously dude. What. The. Hell?"_

_Sam was looking at a pile of printed web pages. He wasn't drinking coffee, only water, and he ignored Dean's question._

_"Hey! Talking here!" Dean stepped forwards, anger getting the better of him._

_He made it three paces before the world abruptly tipped on its axis and the ground rushed with a frightening velocity towards his face._

_Sam had driven them all the way to the Colorado border before anyone asked about Dean._

_"He ok?" A young girl-Rachael- handed Sam his change and looked out of the gas station window. Outside, Dean's head rested against the Impala passenger side window. He wore the tinted shade he wore when trying to get a little shut eye. _

_Sam smiled. "My brother." He tipped his hand towards his lips as if he were drinking from a pint glass. "He had a long night."_

* * *

**Devil's Tower, Wyoming.**

The demon remembered the first brothers he had fucked with. Cain and Abel. Abel and Cain. They were almost as annoying as the Winchester boys. Two self-righteous do-gooders without the acumen to realise just how dark and nasty things were in the real world. Mommy and daddy thought they had it bad after a little ousting from the landlord. They hadn't a clue how hard things really were. So he'd stepped in and leant a hand. That little stunt had gotten him an express trip downstairs, but hell, the land of the living wasn't all that interesting yet.

Not like it was now. No, back then he had to settle for good old-fashioned asphyxiation. Now there were a hundred different ways of killing someone without ever having to leave the kitchen. But no, he had to control himself. Meg had gone a little overboard with her pet shadows, and the human wasn't really up to any more fun and games for a while.

Nor was he, for that matter. Little Sammy was being a pesky host. A spark of pure genius, really. Even he could appreciate as much. The kid had refused to release his hold on consciousness. It happened occasionally. Quite frankly, the demon would have been a little disappointed if it hadn't. The headaches were to be expected, and just as easily ignored, but the kid just wouldn't shut up! Weeks of _touch my brother again, and I'll kill you_, gave way to _please stop,_ and then out of the blue, twenty seven verses of _I am Henry the Eighth, I am. _Was it really any wonder he kept the kid in lullaby land whenever he could? Leave it to a Winchester; if you can't fight off possession, try and annoy it into leaving.

The first time it had happened, the demon broke three of Dean's fingers in retaliation. Sammy, stubborn little Sammy, then made it clear that he would sing two verses for every time Dean was hurt. They had settled into a twenty four hour stalemate after that, before the demon remembered that _he _had single-handedly been responsible for the Sack of Carthage, whilst Sammy was just a human. And a obstinate one at that.

"Son of a bitch! How did you survive adolescence?"

Chains rattled as Dean rolled awkwardly onto his side and peered blindly into the darkness. The wounds left by the Daevas were healing slower than they should have, and the human's face was tight with pain. Still, he swallowed repeatedly until he could open his mouth and say "huh?"

Sometimes the demon thought the kid missed human conversation. Meg could rarely be classed as human these days, at least not around Dean. She tended to get a little carried away.

The headache and Sam had sapped any indulgent feelings the demon may have possessed. "I'm telling you, four months inside my head, and _I'm_ just about ready to kill me!"

Dean blinked, probably wondering if he had woken up in a parallel universe, or if his injuries had left him delusional.

Crossing over to the sprawled human, the demon planted a boot in the kid's chest. Dean wheezed as he was rolled over and pinned beneath Sam's foot. "Go to sleep, little boy. Go to sleep, and I won't leave him needing to breathe out of a tube."

The singing faltered, then died altogether.

Victory was his. With a final -glancing- blow to Dean's abdomen, the demon left.

Dean's water for the day pooled at his feet, the ceramic mug shattered on the ground.

* * *

**Blue Earth, Minnesota**

It was a Tuesday morning, bright and beautiful outside. Candles flickered lightly in the soft breeze from the open front door. The small church was filled with a peaceful stillness at odds with turbulent emotions of the pastor who preached there. For Jim Murphy, that Tuesday morning was simply another day in a seemingly endless parade of weeks. His mind was awash with fear, with doubt. Anxiety and foreboding had become such a staple of his life that at times he marvelled at his own ability to continue on with life as if all was right with the world.

The words of Matthew 19:26 were smooth in the ink beneath his fingers. _With men it is impossible; but to God all things are possible. _He hoped so. All too frequently now the paths that must be taken lead only to hopelessness.

Jim sighed, and tried to find solace in the words that had been the foundations of his life for so long. It was difficult. Weariness was like a poison. Last night he had been on the phone into the small hours of the morning. Each conversation chipped away at the hope inside of him.

It had been four months now, and not a word of new about the Winchester boys. To say Jim was worried was pointless. He had helped raise those children. He had supported Sam's decision to leave for collage, risking John's wrath, and provided a bottle of tequila and a comforting presence to Dean in the days that followed. In the absence of his own children - both now long dead, his dear wife with them- John's sons had filled a hole in the pastor's heart he hadn't realised was there.

To go for so long without a word to say whether they were dead or alive…John Winchester wasn't the only one who was suffering.

He and Caleb had spent many hours talking the night before. Even Caleb, who always _knew a guy who could_, was nearing his wits ends. Both men were insanely glad that it was Missouri, and not them, who had been drafted in to ensure John didn't do something stupid.

Thoughts of just what kinds of trouble John could find if left unsupervised fled Jim's mind as the inner glass door of the church swung open, and a young woman stepped warily into the nave. Candles flickered around them, but did not go out.

Jim closed the Bible and took a step towards her, banishing his own troubles and focusing his attention on the newcomer. He had not seen her before, and she looked troubled.

"Good morning." He said lightly. She looked up, slightly dazed, and smiled hesitantly. "Can I help you?" Experience taught him that people, especially not pretty young women, rarely came to church so early on a weekday morning. Not unless they specifically wanted someone to talk to.

He was right. Her eyes were misty. " I kind of…I need to talk." She took a seat in one of the pews halfway down the aisle. Jim closed the gap between them and stood behind the pew in front of her.

"Well, that's what I am here for." He said kindly.

The girl flushed, ashamed. "I've done some things- not good things."

_Haven't we all_, Jim thought.

"Well, there's always forgiveness for us if we seek it." Or so he hoped. The souls of so many of the people he loved depended on it.

The girl looked up hopefully. "For everyone? Are you sure?"

Jim smiled. She reminded him a little of Dean, and the desperate way he had looked after circumstances had pushed him across a line he had never wanted to cross. "I like to say salvation was created for sinners. Tell me what's on your mind."

She sighed. "Well, I've lied….a lot. I've stolen. I've lusted. And the other day, I met this man—a nice guy, you know? And we had a really good chat—sort of like this." She paused for a moment. "Then I slit his throat and ripped his heart out through his chest."

Eyes that had only moments ago swum with tears turned as black as night. Jim took a step back. "I know what you are." As quickly as they had appeared, her eyes were once again the colour of golden honey. Jim continued to back up. She shouldn't be here. "You can't be here. This is hallowed ground."

"Please. Maybe that works in the minor leagues—but not with me." It wasn't a comforting thought. Making a hasty retreat, Jim headed for the stairs. This had been a long time coming, he knew. You didn't fight the darkness for as long as he had without it coming back for a little payback.

The church basement was packed with items of a less than reputable nature. Jim headed for the cabinet filled with weapons, when something caught his eye. He stopped, frowning, and turned in time to see the woman hop down the last of the stairs and smile at him.

"What do you want?"

She rolled her eyes. "I _want_ a condo in LA, but I'll settle for John Winchester."

"Funny." John stepped out of the shadows, unarmed, and minus his usual heavy coat. The woman spun around, surprised. "You're just the person _I _want."

"Well, well. Johnny boy decided to show his face." She regained her equilibrium quickly and flashed John a bright smile. "You know the only reason I'm here is because we'd gone so long without hearing from you. We thought you might have died of old age."

John stepped forwards. "Well here I am." He held up his hands.

"I have to say, everything I've heard about you, I'm a little under whelmed. No weapon?"

"Don't need one." John smirked, and Jim wondered momentarily if the hunter had taken leave of his senses.

The woman was on the same page. "Cocky." She smiled.

John shook his head. "No. Just a fact." John's smirk grew, and his eyes slowly rose to the ceiling above her head. Confused, both Jim and the woman looked up.

There, on the belly of the church floor, was a chalk symbol- the seal of Solomon, if Jim remembered correctly. The girl's face contorted in anger.

"Bastard!" She screamed, launching herself at John, only to bounce back against an invisibly force. Enraged, she spun, spitting like a wildcat. "Stupid, Johnny, really fucking stupid. You wouldn't have pulled a stunt like that if you knew what's happening to your boys right now." A cruel satisfaction seeped in amongst the anger. John took a step forwards, closer to the edge of the seal. His face was a mask of pain and fury, but his voice remained steady.

"We'll get to that." Jim swallowed around the lump in his throat. He knew how much it must have cost John not to respond to the taunt.

"I made them scream." She whispered cruelly.

John took another step forwards in anger. Before he could cross the line of the seal, the blond haired demon crumpled to the floor in a boneless pile. Behind her, Caleb loomed with a raised fist, Bobby and Missouri at his side.

Jim shot the other hunters a dark look.

"Next time you want to use me as bait, please do so _outside_ the church." He scowled up at the white symbol. "How on earth am I going to explain that to the committee?"

TBC

_Coming soon._

Dean gives McQueen a run for his money, whilst John attempts a little Winchester/demon exorcism that may, or may not go as planned. Next update due Friday at the very latest.

Please forgive the shortness of these first few chapters. One more short-ish part, and then things will get longer, I promise. Hang with me.

Thank you so much to the lovely people who left reviews for the last part. They get cookies, and the Impala's keys. Reviewers for this chapter get Dean's sunglasses and Sam's half chewed pencil. If that's not an incentive, I don't know what is!


	3. Chapter 3

_Ok folks, things are speeding up now. We find out a little more about Meg and the demon, and you get some clues, so the clever/bored of you can perhaps spot a few future plot points. Sammy is giving scholarships to those who get the connection between Meg, and the words the demon mutters. (Which incidentally are Sumerian. I come across the language occasionally in my work, but am by no means an expert. So please, allow me what is quite probably a huge use grammatical errors.) Enjoy!_

* * *

**Devil's Tower, Wyoming.**

"Oh _fuck_ it!" That shard of ceramic had once been a mug with Betty Boop stamped all over it. Now it was the key item in Escape no.13.

The chains were a relatively new addition to the Leatherface basement the demon had somehow procured. They were something like a badge of honour. He knew he had hit the big leagues when a prop from an Eli Roth flick had replaced the police issue cuffs.

Morbidly he wondered what was next along the scale. Straightjacket? Or maybe the demon would just head back to antiquity and break his legs the good old Roman way. The cellar was big enough for an Iron Maiden, maybe that was next.

There was nothing like hours of pitch-black solitude to get your mind wandering down alleys that were best avoided. It was that which was killing him, more than anything else. For all of his bravado and mouth, there was one thing Dean was afraid of more than anything: being alone. He needed human contact, needed to hear voices. He needed to see humanity to remind himself that yes, all this heartache really _was_ worth it. The demon sometimes went for days without speaking to him, and it was no surprise. Having hijacked a ride in Sammy's freaky mind, the son of a bitch knew exactly how to hurt him the most.

A little brother's prerogative.

Thoughts of Sam kicked his mind into gear. He not had given up the hope that Sam could somehow fight his way back to control. To the best of his knowledge, no one had ever fought off a possession completely, but Sam was strange like that. He was always good at doing things people told him he couldn't. Like when they were kids and Sam wanted to climb the tree behind their cabin. Dean told him he was too small, so Sam climbed onto the roof of the cabin instead, just to prove he could. If anyone could do it, Sam could, but as the weeks had passed, Dean had accepted that for the very first time, he was stuck on the sidelines whilst the battle raged beyond his reach.

Dean couldn't help Sam. Hell, he couldn't help _himself_,and whether the kid was conscious throughout the possession or not, sooner or later, Sam was going to look at Dean with his own eyes, and embark on the biggest guilt trip imaginable.

To put it frankly, Dean had his own issues. He doubted he could deal with Sam's as well.

They needed help.

In the months he had been the unwilling houseguest of his mother's killer, Dean had lost weight. Enough so that the cuffs around his wrists weren't as tight as they once were. He gripped the shard of ceramic tighter, the sting barely registering. Slick with blood, his wrist slid through the confines of the chain. As he moved on to the left, he wondered vaguely how far he would make it this time.

In all likely hood, not very far at all.

In the immortal words of Big X, 'it is my duty to harass, confound, and confuse the enemy to the best of my ability.' To confound and confuse, quite possibly the only subject he had passed in school, and the only real objective he had left.

Dean wasn't delusional, and he wasn't stupid. The chances of walking away from this alive were minimal. Even if he were in a fit condition to evade recapture, a part of him knew he could never leave Sam alone with the demon. At least this way he could keep an eye on his brother, and try and direct the demon's attention away from his father, -wherever John Winchester may be.

Free of the confines of his bonds, Dean lay still for several minutes. It was alarming how quickly the effort to free himself had taxed his system. Dizzy, hurting, and weary beyond endurance, it took him awhile to convince his body to follow his mind's objective.

The wounds from his last sprint for freedom had yet to heal. Meg's pet had wrapped one invisible claw around his calf and dragged him back into the house and throw him face first down the stairs. The landing had been unceremonious, undignified, and Meg had kicked him in the head for good measure. That had been twelve days ago, and his leg should have heeled better than it had.

It was difficult to see into the corners of the room, but Dean's eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. So much so, in fact, that when he had first escaped from his prison, it had been the sudden, blinding light of day that had gotten him caught. Seeing shouldn't have been painful, but it was.

Dean used the chains to pull himself into his knees. From there it was easier to crawl to the stairs than it was to walk. He would save that titanic effort for when it was truly needed.

There were thirteen stairs leading from the basement to the small landing between the back door and the kitchen. He should know, he'd crawled up them, and fallen down them enough times in the past few months. By the time he reached number eleven, he has doubled for breath, but somehow managed to stagger to his feet. If his nightmare ever ended, he was never using stairs again. It was elevators or nothing.

The basement door was never locked. The demon liked to mock him that way. Hell, the Impala was even parked at the end of the drive. The keys were on the kitchen table. The bastard was even more sadistic than their father on a training kick. Silently, he slipped out of the basement, and braced himself for the blast of pain behind his eyes.

It came, stealing his breath away, and leaving just as quickly. With extra care, Dean slipped onto the landing, using the wall to keep himself upright and locking his knees against the tremors that shook them.

Nearly there. Almost there.

* * *

**Blue Earth, Minnesota**

John had Bobby set up shop with his Latin exorcism texts. Both he and the other hunters were fluent in the language, but Bobby was the demon expert. He had always been the one to turn to for demonic troubles, and had taught John everything he knew.

Meg had been secured to a chair with rope, and had smiled sweetly at Caleb whilst the hunter tied her bonds tighter than was necessary. John stood guard, barely containing the urge to shake her.

""Looks like your friends forgot to give you the newsletter, darling. You might be on a petty little revenge kick, but the rest of us…we're at war. Look at the company you keep." Her eyes rolled disdainfully over the group of hunters. "A psychic, a Renervant, a murderer, a-" Caleb's fist caught her under her jaw.

"He gets the point." The foreign hunter growled.

Meg licked at the blood that stained her lips. She smiled flirtatiously at the two men in front of her. "I'm just saying, for a guy who insists on going it alone, you've built yourself a nice little army, John boy. We're just doing the same."

"Caleb." Bobby snapped. He looked up from his books and scowled.

Missouri stepped in. "John, Caleb, get over here." She ordered. Neither man made a move. "Now."

"Thanks," Meg smiled sardonically at the sober refaced psychic. "Us girls have to stick together and all." She winked.

"Honey, you ain't no girl. I know exactly what you are, _Lilith_."

"Ooh! You _are_ good." Meg purred, her eyes black. "You're not up for a little conversion are you? Come to the dark side. We have cookies." Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, "And if you're real good, we might let you play with Dean. He screams so nicely."

"John!" Both Bobby and Missouri latched onto the enraged father. Fresh blood trickled from the demon's nose, and her laughter rang like bells through the church basement.

Hustling John into the far corner, and glaring at Caleb until he joined them, Bobby looked over his shoulder at Meg.

"Be careful with her." He warned. "That girl is innocent."

"She knows where my sons are." John snarled, not ready to let a little thing like morals stand between him and his boys.

Bobby nodded in sympathy.

"I know, but do you think they would want to be saved at the expense of a young girl's soul? I know they wouldn't."

"I don't care what they would want." John looked anguished. "All I care about is them being alive to want _at all_."

"They are alive." Missouri promised. Her heat ached for him.

"Just stay with me." Bobby pleaded. Three sets of eyes fixed upon the heartbroken father. Finally, he nodded.

Bobby sighed in relief, and headed back to his books. Caleb began to pace, and John took up his sentry position once more.

* * *

The Daevas were on them before they knew what hit them. Caleb met the bookshelf with a crash, cursing Jim's love for heavy, hardback volumes as they rained down on his head. The shadow demon was on him a second later, one claw raking his shoulder to his hip.

Bobby took a blow to the face, three red lines splitting his cheek before he met the wall and was held there by an invisible hand.

The sight of his friends suddenly being attacked by invisible monsters spurned John into action. His arm closed around Missouri, propelling her from the room with a shove. Pain sent sparks across his vision as one demon got a firm grip on his shoulder, spinning him around in time for him to see Meg brush her bonds insolently to the floor. Above her head, the seal was split by three long gorges.

"This is so much more fun than Latin, don't you think?" She giggled like a schoolgirl and clapped her hands. A silver chain glittered between her fingers.

A howl of pain from somewhere in the room, Caleb, Bobby, both, and John didn't stop to think. The colt was suddenly in his hands. One shot, and Meg dropped to her knees, a look of stunned dismay replacing the sadistic delight. Bobby dropped to the floor, bleeding freely. Caleb grunted as the weight on his chest vanished.

Blue lighting shot across Meg's skin. She fell.

Coughing, then moaning at the pain it caused, Caleb rolled onto his side and surveyed the damage, dislodging a copy of Hymns and Pslams from his chest.

"Well," he gasped. "At least we know the damn thing works."

* * *

Dean's clammy fingers closed around the doorknob. He could see freedom through the glass panes of the door, hazy through white lace. The latched clicked as an unearthly scream shook the foundations of the house.

He couldn't help it, he jumped. Loud noises had that effect on him now.

The screaming came from the kitchen, a loud, continuous wail of anguish sporadically broken by the shatter of plates.

Dean swallowed against the bile that rose in his throat. He couldn't leave. Not now, not ever. Not without Sam, fully in control and back to his annoying, geeky self.

Hesitantly he peered around the partition into the kitchen. Sam was on his knees, deep, bloody gashes in his cheeks and arms, his fingers tearing at his skin. He screamed again, and the hairs on the back of Dean's neck stood on end.

A liturgy of jumbled words spewed forth. Dean recognised some of them, having overheard Sam and Meg whisper whilst they tortured him.

"_Amelseruen. Amelseruen. Amelseruen." _One word, repeated over and over, and if Dean didn't know the monster had no heart, he would have sworn the thing was crying. "_Ana simtim alakuen."_

His bare feet made no sound on the carpet, but Sam's head shot up, and he rose slowly to his feet.

The door seemed miles away as the demon closed in on its prey. Years of experience collided with instinct, overriding the fear tried to coil itself around Dean's chest. His world narrowed to fight or flight. He took a step back, wincing as his weight shifted to rest more squarely on his feet, and his wounded leg burned in protest.

"Enough with the games already." Dean yelled hoarsely. Sam stepped to the left, feigning an attack. Dean followed. He took one-step forwards only to be flung against the wall and pinned like a butterfly on a collector's board. There was a good foot between his feet and the ground, and all Dean could think about was how much more terrifying this must have been for his mother.

"Bringing back pleasant memories, big brother?" Sam asked sweetly, closing in on the trapped hunter with golden murder in his eyes. The dynamics of their relationship had shifted. The demon was no longer using Sam to play with him. This was the evil son of a bitch, yellow eyes and all.

It was actually a relief to Dean. He was weary, and hurting, and another showdown with the Sammy demon might just have killed something inside of him.

"Fuck you." Dean spat, tasting blood and knowing that time was running short.

"No." Sam chuckled. "Fuck _you."_

* * *

"I've never known a demonto be able to do that before." Bobby whispered, sounding rather awestruck as they looked down on the broken body of the innocent young woman entangled in their little web of darkness. John held the colt limply by his side. He knew he should feel remorse for what he had been forced to do. Lord knows he did, deep down, but Meg had been the first, and possibly the last, lead he had had on his boys. She was dead now; her secrets with her, and Missouri had been unable to learn a single thing from reading her.

He was back where he started.

"Oh John." Missouri had slipped back into mothering mode, her face sad as she watched her old friend drop wearily into an empty chair. He hadn't looked so lost since the first time she met him. Back then, he had been a young husband, raw from the loss of his wife, with two lost sheep following him, silently screaming for love and answers. Dean especially had been desperate for his daddy to make things better, and the helplessness had almost killed John.

Now it was as if the last threads tying the hurting man to this world had frayed beyond their ability to hold him. The others, their small, adopted family, they all loved him, but they hadn't the power to make John stand when all he wanted to do was lay down and die. That privilege belonged only to Dean and Sam.

She took his hand gently in her own, feeling the calluses that came from a near continuous use of firearms. Stripped of his considerable armour, his gaze was the mirror of Sam's. When the boy had asked her what was happening to him on that porch in Lawrence, his eyes were so damn vulnerable it had taken all of her strength not to reach out and hug him. John looked just the same in that moment.

"I need them back." He whispered, too softly for anyone but her to hear.

"We'll find them John, I promise you. This will be alright."

As if her words had conjured some long forgotten magic, Caleb appeared and crouched down in front of John's chair. The other hunter's face had aged more in the last twenty minutes that it had throughout the entirety of their long friendship. John's cell phone was ringing in his hand, and suddenly Missouri knew that John needed to answer it.

"Take the call John." She ordered, the compassion leaving her voice to be replaced by something the men could not decipher.

Obediently, wearily, John flipped open the phone and held it to his ear.

"Winchester."

Caleb and Missouri hovered with bated breath, the hunter picking up on Missouri's psychic anxiety. John's face morphed from tired to shocked, to relieved in a heartbeat.

"Sammy?"

* * *

For the first time in months, Sam was in control of his own body. The demon had left him in peace, and it was if he had taken a deep breath of air after being held underwater. The linoleum felt smooth and cool under his hands, and for a long moment he simply languished in the freedom he had rediscovered.

It was the ticking of the clock on the wall that finally made Sam look up; it was so damned loud. Dean was standing underneath it, smirking in the cold, cruel way he sometime did before moving in for the kill.

Sam scrambled to his feet.

"I gotta say, Sammy. This has been fun." Dean's green eyes glowed as if they were swimming with amber. "I always knew you'd be a hard nut to crack, but we'll get there in the end. I'll be seeing ya." With one final smirk, Dean's head jerked back and he screamed.

It was a sound Sam had become uncomfortably familiar with these last months. He was too stunned to do more than stand and watch as the demon made its exit in a dramatic howl of black smoke, before slipping through the open window and evaporating into the night.

Fortunately, Sam found his feet in time to catch Dean as he buckled. Wavering unsteadily on his own legs, his mind having difficulty regaining the fine control it should have, Sam was forced to drop to his knees. He did his best to soften Dean's fall with his own arms, and the two brothers sank gracelessly into the kitchen floor.

"Dean?" Sam brushed strands of sweat soaked hair out of Dean's closed eyes. The older hunter was out of it, his head lolled in Sam's arms. "God, Dean." Of their own volition, Sam's hands sort out the visible injuries on his brother's body, flinching every time they found a wound or a bruise or a break that shouldn't have been allowed within a ten-mile radius of his big brother. "Dean, come on man, wake up."

Even the forceful shake Sam gave him failed to cause so much as a flicker of an eyelash. Franticly, Sam searched for a pulse, desperate for a soft, sluggish thump to reassure him that Dean still lived. Seconds passed. There was nothing. Dean lay utterly still in his arms.

* * *

TBC

_Hehehe. I'm sorry. I really shouldn't have enjoyed that as much as I did. What can I say? I'm functioning on less than five hours sleep a night. The joys of life, such as they are, come in all shapes and sizes. Mine is apparently Dean shaped, and looks a little worse for wear._

_Worry not though; we are nowhere near the end of the road yet. There is plenty to come, including a harrowing drive across country, Sam squaring it out with a demon of his own imagination, and things getting even more sticky for poor old Dean._

_Thank you all once again for the lovely reviews! You've really helped keep me on track with this, which given my workload, is a small miracle. So you know what you have to do if you want another update (sly smile). You don't want me to leave Dean in the mess he is in, do you? No? Click the little review button to contribute to the Dean Lives Foundation. Membership badges to all._

_See you soon!_


	4. Chapter 4

_Time to kick the angst up a notch. I told you things were going to get worse before they get better. I figured it was Sam's time for a little angst; it is his soul that is on the line, after all._

* * *

**Lake Charles, New Orleans**

The pounding on the door had eventually given way to a muted sobbing. The woman, Helen, she cried into the arms of her husband, her daughter's name on her lips like a prayer. The father, for his part, did as he promised, and for that Gordon Walker was thankful.

The girl's name was Becky. Rebecca. Becca. Gordon didn't know which she preferred, but the mother called her Becky, so he stuck with that. The bonds he had bound her with were threaded with silver, cost a fortune. The room smelled of vomit and blood and burned flesh, but he wasn't done yet.

The demon was pissed. Nasty, vicious thing, but nothing he couldn't handle. Nothing he hadn't expected. But powerful or not, the thing was well connected, it _knew_ things. Important things. Things Gordon needed to know. Things Gordon's boss needed to know.

He picked up the flask of holy water, glad he had brought in three bottles of the stuff.

Becky, pretty, fifteen and blonde, her eyes were black when she looked at him, but the tears were all her own.

Three drops splashed onto the bare skin of her calf.

"I'll ask you again. Tell me about these soldiers, these psychics…"

* * *

**Devil's Tower, Wyoming**

Dean was broken. Sam felt it with the first gasping breath his brother made. He saw it in the hollow green eyes that looked out at him from Dean's pale face. There was nothing there. The vibrant spirit his brother had fought and fought to retain over months of the demon's tortures was gone. Dean had fled with the monster that had forced its way into his scarred mind, leaving Sam with only the shell of the brother he loved.

The precious seconds that passed as Sam frantically fought to find a pulse had given way to delirious relief as Dean coughed and hacked and shuddered in his arms. Sam had held him close, not caring that Dean would have kicked his ass for it in the past, just pressed his cheek to Dean's head and shuddered at the chill he felt in the clammy skin. The coughing subsided, and relief turned to panic, to horror.

For a second, heart-stopping moment, Sam had thought his brother was dead. How else could he explain the stillness of Dean's face, the unseeing, unblinking wide eyes? Soft breaths and a barely visible rise and fall of his chest were all that set Dean apart from a corpse.

It should have been difficult; Sam was desperate to get out of that house. Everywhere he looked, images, like scattered photographs, flashed across his mind- things he did. Things he said. No way was he staying there. No way would he keep Dean for another second in the prison he hated. He had expected it to be hard. It wasn't. He found Dean's bag, its contents thumbed though in a way that made Sam burn in anger. He grabbed it, and hastily shoved his own things into the battered canvas sack. Dean remained right where Sam left him, on the kitchen floor, his head resting on Sam's jacket.

The Impala keys were thrust into his pocket, as was his wallet, and Dean's bag was slung over his shoulders like a rucksack. Sam didn't know if Dean would walk under his guidance, but he figured that was an experiment for later. The demon could be back at any second, and Dean was in no condition to be on his feet.

Carefully, as if he were handling a baby bird that had fallen from its nest, Sam slid one arm around Dean's shoulders, and the other under his knees and lifted him. He didn't sprint to the door, though he wanted to, but moved at a smooth, steady pace, careful not to jar his brother. His throat tightened as the Impala came into view, and it occurred to Sam that he would never have been able to carry his bother so easily in the past.

Tears blurred his vision, but the Impala's tank was full, and Dean sat shotgun as he had in the past. After a few miles of silence, Sam pushed in a cassette and let Dean's favourite AC/DC tracks wash over him. Dean didn't stir at the familiar music, but it soothed Sam. It let him pretend that his brother was merely sleeping, that they had a job ahead of them. He pretended that the past four months had never happened, and that he didn't have Dean's blood encrusted under his fingernails.

**

* * *

Edgemont, South Dakota**

Sam didn't stop driving until they crossed the state line into South Dakota. Then he drove straight to the first motel he saw. They'd been on the road for hours. Dean still hadn't said a word or so much as twitched. His glassy, wide eyes stared out of the windscreen, and Sam had been reluctant to leave him alone long enough to book a room. He did though, squeezing Dean's hand before he left, knowing that if anyone saw his brother in the state he was in, the cops would be called before Sam could say 'demonic possession.'

The woman behind the counter was pretty in a laid-back way, and she seemed genuinely apologetic when Sam asked for two queens, and she could only offer him a king. Sam took it, paying for a week with the money that Dean kept hidden in the lining of his bag. It wasn't as if he planned to get any sleep.

Sam had never been more grateful for the darkness of the pre-dawn hours than he was that night. He parked the Impala as close to the room as he could, and took everything inside-empting the trunk of anything remotely useful. He switched on every light in the room, salted the windows and doors, and dragged the drapes shut before carrying Dean into the room and settling him on the bed.

"Hey, Dean." Sam was careful to keep his voice light and soothing, when all he wanted to do was cry. "We're back home-or as close to home as we ever get." He patted Dean's hand clumsily, all to aware of the face that before their capture, he and Dean rarely touched, and after it, all contact was intended to cause the older hunter as much pain as possible. "I'm gonna call dad, let him know we're okay." Which we aren't, Sam thought. Not by a long shot. "Then we'll get you cleaned up."

Sam didn't wait for the answer he knew wasn't coming. Instead, he fished Dean's cell out of his bag, and plugged the charger in at the wall. The presence of their belongings, Sam's laptop, Dean's phone, they were all so painfully normal.

As soon as the screen flashed on Dean's cell, Sam called dialled up their dad's number. He prayed that for once, he wouldn't be put through to voicemail.

**

* * *

Blue Earth, Minnesota**

"Winchester."

Caleb and Missouri hovered with bated breath, the hunter picking up on Missouri's psychic anxiety. John's face morphed from tired to shocked, to relieved in a heartbeat.

_"Dad?"_

"Sammy?" John nearly choked on the word, his son's voice tightening around his heart like a vice. The boy sounded terrible, weary and as close to tears as John could remember. He was Sammy again. John could barely restrain himself from trying to reach down the phone and pull the boy into his arms.

_"Dad." _

"Sammy, are you alright? Is Dean? Where are you?" He was babbling, he knew, and not reacting in a professional manner. Caleb's knuckles had turned white on the arm of the chair. Bobby, Jim and Missouri edged closer with every second that passed.

_"We're staying at the Rainbow Motel, Edgemont."_

"South Dakota?"

_"Yeah. Room 12A." _Sam paused, his sentence punctuated by a bone weary sigh. _"Dad, we need you. Dean…he's not good."_

John bit his lip hard enough to taste blood. "The demon?"

_"Gone. I think." _Sam seemed sure, despite the hesitancy in his voice. Edgemont, a good five, six hundred miles from Blue Earth. John ddidn't care. His truck keys were already in hand, Caleb had the maps out, studying the route.

"You boys safe? Salt? Is the room secure?"

_"Yes sir."_ John almost cries at the familiarity.

"Atta boy Sammy. Don't leave the room, understand me?"

_"Yes sir."_

"Hang on kiddo. I'll be there as soon as I can."

He could hear Sam's breathing down the line, didn't want to think why it was his youngest calling him, and not Dean. Hanging up was harder than leaving them in Chicago.

He turned to Caleb. "How long to Edgemont?"

Caleb didn't look up, his fingers tracing and retracing the route. "About nine hours, give or take."

Nine hours. John looked at his watch. Four twenty seven am. He'd be there by midday. Speed laws were meant to be broken.

**

* * *

I90 E**

John speed onto the I90 E. There were another four hundred and eighty miles between him and his sons. Only one state, but they could have been in Hong Kong. Besides him, Caleb was engaged in a heated discussion on his cell. The foreign hunter was speaking in German, and John was able to interpret a few of them from his Marine days. Mostly the cuss words. Caleb wasn't happy about something. He hung up, and practically threw his cell onto the dash.

"I just spoke to Erik." He said by way of explanation. John vaguely recalled that Erik was one of Caleb's academic friends. A historian, if he remembered correctly. A professor at Munich University. Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache. "Apparently, there was a break in last night. Someone stole a mediaeval dagger from the graduate office."

"Someone left a dagger in an office?" John asked in disbelief. Caleb shook his head in agreement.

"Some kid was supposed to be photographing it for his thesis. The director is on vacation, so the office was _looking after it._ Here's the thing though. Security checked the cameras, nothing. No tripped alarms and nothing else stolen. I know that place, man. There's a hell of a lot of technology that would fetch a pretty penny on the market."

John navigated the lanes on the freeway without paying them much attention. "So what was this dagger then? Anything special?"

"No, that's just it. As far as anyone could tell, it was just a pretty piece made to decorate some nobleman's shelf."

John nodded, suddenly understanding his friend's concern. "So either they picked the wrong item," John surmised.

"…or they know something we don't." Caleb said morosely. "Either way, Erik knows I have connections in the Black Market. I said I'd keep an eye open for him."

John snorted, though he didn't smile. "You're just every scholar's wet dream, ain't ya?"

"Blow me." Caleb said primly. "Besides," his tone became dark and bitter, "It's not like my limitless connections did your boys any good. I'm sorry John. I'm sorry I couldn't find them for you sooner."

Sam's soft, pain filled voice still rang in John's ears. He nodded to accept Caleb's apology, and to say that it wasn't really necessary.

"They're though." John said, refusing to believe otherwise. "They'll be fine." If he said the words enough times, he could pretend he hadn't heard the tremors in Sam's voice, or the way he said _Dean…he's not good. _A part of him dreaded seeing them again, knowing that he would see the evidence of his failure in the eyes of his boys.

Another part of him couldn't drive faster.

"You know this could be a trap, don't you?" He had to admire Caleb; the man had balls. The hunter looked at John as if he expected to be punched. John nodded sharply, and his friend grinned. "Right, who gives a fuck if it is?"

_**You are now entering South Dakota.**_

John floored it.

**

* * *

Edgemont, South Dakota**

Things started to get more difficult. Not because Dean screamed or fought or flinched from his touch, but because Sam _wanted _him to, and he didn't.

Hanging up after speaking to his father had inflated a balloon of hope in his chest. Dad was coming. Dad would fix things. Dad always fixed things. So he turned to Dean, ready to carry out the second part of his promise.

The hunter was filthy. His hair was long and tangled, matted with blood and other sticky, vile things that Sam didn't want to think about, but had to. Because he was the one that put them there. Dean needed a shave; he had a beard for the first time in his life. Sam didn't like it. It made him look old, like one of the hobos they had met after crawling into train shed in Louisiana, back before Stanford.

He needed a shower. He needed clean clothing. And then there would be the patch up session. Sam had been stitching Dean's wounds and setting his broken bones for years. He could do this. It wasn't until he came to stripping Dean of his tatty, baggy grey shirt that he realised Dean's thumb was dislocated, and already he had begun letting Dean down again.

He took Dean's hand in his own. "Christ, I'm sorry. I didn't know." Dean didn't make a sound as Sam popped the joint back into place, so Sam cried for them both. He cleaned Dean up as best he could, forgoing a shower for a bath, in which he got wetter than Dean did, and his brother didn't issue a single threat at the treatment. He half hoped Dean would sock him for the sheer gall of trying to bathe him, and that hope stemmed his anger as he washed away blood and sweat and dirt to reveal the pale, thin skin below.

Triage was harder. For Sam, not Dean. Dean didn't utter a sound, even when Sam's hands shook mid stitch and he bandaged Dean's knee so tightly the limb wouldn't bend. None of the injuries were life threatening, and for that, Sam was grateful. The process took him far longer than it should have, each injury making Sam's stomach clench and burn. He threw up twice from start to finish. Dean just sat there, not noticing when Sam fled the room, and not offering his usual brand of smart-ass concern.

By the time they were finished, Sam had dressed his brother in warm clothes that were too big, and the colours, once Dean's favourites, left his skin looking paler than ever.

Sam talked the whole while.

"Ok, Dean. Let's see if we can't get you looking pretty again, man. Cos I have to say, the whole facial hair thing just isn't working."

A lifetime ago, Dean would have huffed and pointed out that _he _could make any look work, Sam was just jealous.

It was the razor that got Dean's attention, both scaring Sam half to death, and soothing him at the same time.

It was a cheep, plastic model, one of the disposable types Dean picked up in packs of eight. Bright and tacky. Sam sat Dean on the toilet seat, lathered up a handful of foam, and carefully removed the hairy evidence of Dean's incarceration. He continued to talk, about everything and nothing, not knowing which topics were safe to talk about, and hated that he couldn't even bring up humorous events in their past for fear that the demon had distorted them in Dean's mind.

So much effort and care was taken in the way he held Dean's face still for the blade; gently, not restricting, a memory surfacing of his fingers digging into Dean's jaw, forcing and twisting and- Sam swallowed back fresh tears. He was so careful that it wasn't until he began wiping away the last of the foam residues that the tears rolling down Dean's cheeks registered.

"Dean? God, I'm sorry. What did I do?" Dean's eyes were fixed on the plastic razor as if it were some medieval torture device. Sam took one look at his brother, at the way Dean's eyes, wide and so vulnerable, actually _saw_ the razor. It hit the sink with a clatter, and Sam held his hands up for Dean to see. He was unarmed. _He wouldn't hurt him. Not now. Not ever. He'd die first. _

Dean said nothing, and Sam decided that he'd wait for their father to cut Dean's hair. If he'd reacted that way to a harmless razor, scissors would have him climbing the walls. Dean was still crying, soft, silent tears, when Sam carried him to the bed and tucked him under layers of bedding. It was warm outside, but Dean had not stopped shivering all night.

"Get some sleep." Sam whispered, brushing away the tears with his thumb and shedding a few of his own as he did. "Dad will be here soon. He'll fix things."

Dean obediently closed his eyes; another sign of life that Sam clung to.

"Sleep," he whispered, and then, because Dean had always done the same for him when they were children, he began to softly sing the lullaby their mother had taught his big brother.

_"The winds of night so softly are sighing; soon they will fly your troubles to sea…"_

**

* * *

Rainbow Motel parking lot. SD**

John remembered the day he first met Caleb. It was only days after he had sat huddled in Missouri's sitting room. Sammy just wouldn't stop crying and Dean still hadn't said a word, John couldn't take it. He left the boys with Mary's parents, took the first car from the Garage he could find the keys for, and driven thirty miles to a bar. No one knew his name there, and no one wanted to tell him how sorry they were. No one would bother him.

No one except Caleb.

John swore the bastard hadn't aged a day. Still looked as if he had turned thirty that morning. The shaved head said Buddhist monk, the clothes said 80s rock god, and the arsenal in the trunk said severely mentally unstable. John had liked him from the get go. Caleb had taught him more about weapons than any Marine DS ever could, and had introduced him to Jim, and to Bobby.

He had always considered the man a friend. A best friend. Then Caleb had to go one-step further. Pulling into the parking lot outside of the Rainbow Motel, Edgemont, and the foreign hunter clapped John on the shoulder and pulled him into an awkward, one armed hug.

"I'll secure the perimeter." Caleb promised. "Nothing will get passed me." John believed him, because nothing ever had. He watched Caleb take the safety off his Glock, and knew that his friend wanted nothing more than to see Dean and Sam. Caleb loved John's boys. He vanished into the shadows, giving John the privacy, and security, to do what he needed to do.

"Bastard." John whispered affectionately. He raised his fist to door 12A, and knocked just as the screaming started.

Sam left Dean close to noon, and spent twenty minutes cleaning blood from the passenger seat of the Impala. Dean was going to get better, and blood was a sure fire way to piss him off. He'd spent the first hour after Dean had drifted into a restless sleep in the shower, scrubbing at his skin until his own blood replaced Dean's. Back inside, he saw that Dean was still sleeping, and someone was sobbing in the small space between bed and wall.

Sam had the shotgun before he'd even closed the door.

The crying was soft, muffled. He checked Dean once more, no, it wasn't him.

Sam crouched down. Only years of training and instincts saved him from dropping the gun in shock. A child sat huddled in the corner, rocking backwards and forwards and the pain hit him like an anvil.

A vision? No…but it crippled him none the less. Without Dean to support him, Sam dropped to his knees and clutched his head, his fingers gripping his hair as if external pain would make the internal agony stop.

The little boy looked up, tears in his eyes.

"Dean?"

"Don't hurt me any more, Sammy." The boy begged, and with one last sob, he vanished, taking the pain in Sam's head with him. He climbed awkwardly to his knees and started. Dean was sitting upright, his face chalk white. Sam took a step forwards, and Dean's answering scream could have woken the dead.

TBC

* * *

_Ok, so my amazing pal Annie has just been promoted! Yay for you, sugar! However, this does mean she is now working some of the most unsociable hours known to man, and I have lost my sounding board for ideas. If there are any volunteers for the position, please let me know. As for the rest of you, feedback is steadily replacing caffeine as my lifeblood. So if you want a speedy update, and you want to see if A, Dean snaps out of it and B, if Sam is loosing his mind, and C, what the hell Gordy is up to, you know what to do._

Now to answer few questions that have popped up.

No, this is not slash!

There are about 17-20 parts to the story, so we have a way to go yet!

Dean's blood type is AB+, because he has to be difficult.

The demon WILL be back. With friends.

See 1.

Yes, we will learn a little of what transpired in the first few weeks of Sam's possession. Only a little, mind. The imagination is far more proficient at filling in the blanks that I ever could be.

I am a Sagittarius!


	5. Chapter 5

_Ok, sorry for the delay. This are wicked crazy right now with research deadlines rapidly approaching, and invigilation processes attempting to make life hell. I have not been able to respond to your lovely reviews, and for that I am sorry. Each and every one of them makes me smile, and calms me down enough to face the department head without needing to hit something/one. So thank you._

_**Warning**, random history stuff in authors notes. Avoid if easily bored._

_Ok, so we are taking a step out of the country in this chapter. Dean is going on a vacation somewhere warm. I would not advise anyone visiting at this moment in time, which is a shame, because it is an amazing place, and one of the most significant historical sites in the world. For those of you who are interested, Uruk is situated on the Euphrates River, and was the centre for Sumerian culture for thousands of years. It was also far, far bigger than Troy, Mycenae and the other famous, archaic cities (Does obligatory 'our site is bigger than yours' dance). On the IV level of the E-Anna precinct, some of the earliest written sources have been discovered. Bullae, tablets, and early protocuneiform, so there is a reason why I have sent Dean there. Honest. Oh, there is also a temple shaped like a cross, built 3,500 years before Christ. Neat, huh? No…okay. On with the story then!_

* * *

**Edgemont, South Dakota**

Sam had never realised just how much his dad resembled Sylvester Stallone until John kicked down the motel door as if it were made of cardboard. He looked as if he had aged a hundred years since Chicago. He needed a haircut more than Dean did. The guns in each hand and the gleam in his eyes left Sam in no doubt that the Winchester patriarch had murder in mind.

Sam remained motionless as Dean screamed, and their father searched the room for the cause of his son's distress. Terrified, Dean threw himself from the bed, his bandaged legs collapsing beneath his weight. The movement kicked Sam into action. Reacting faster than Sam had ever seen him, John holstered his weapons and dived across the room in time to prevent Dean's skull from cracking against a chair.

Sam reacted without thinking, doing what Dean himself had done countless times when either Sam or their father was caught in the violent nightmares that plagued all hunters. Caught in an awkward position, John could not stop his son from lashing out blindly, so Sam tackled them both.

Free of the restricting weight, John was able to roll aside and help Sam try to still Dean's desperate thrashing. It was not until his brother abruptly stopped viciously struggling that Sam's brain kicked in and he caught a glimpse of the terror in his Dean's eyes. Somehow, in the struggle, Sam's training had kicked in, and Dean had ended up pinned under his brother, one arm firmly in John's grasp, the other pinned by Sam.

_Sam watched from behind another's eyes as Dean finally went still beneath him. The voice inside his head laughed as if it were watching a movie. "You shouldn't fight me so hard, Sammy. I can make things so much more uncomfortable for him." Sam looked down in the fresh set of bruises ringing Dean's neck, and reluctantly released his claim on his body._

"Jesus Christ." Sam muttered brokenly. John frowned, confused, when Sam threw himself off his brother and made a beeline for the bathroom.

"Sammy?"

Sam did not answer, but Caleb, attracted by the racket the small family had made, skidded through the open motel doorway, armed and slightly disappointed that there was nothing to shoot.

"John?" The hunter took one look at John, who upon Sam's departure had acted on impulse and pulled his trembling son into the circle of his arms. John did not remove his gaze from Dean's battered face. "Check on Sammy." He gruffly ordered.

Caleb nodded. He holstered his gun and tentatively stepped into the bathroom. The relief that hit him almost knocked him to his knees. Sam was half curled around the toilet, shaking with the after affects of a violent case of nausea. The kid looked as if he hadn't eaten in a few days, and dry heaving was uncomfortable in the best of circumstances.

Sam looked up though long, damp bangs. His young face was as pale as Dean's, and his eyes were bright and broken. "Hey, kiddo."

For a second, Sam didn't see his father's friend, or the man who had cared for him and his brother for so many years. The motel bathroom faded from sight, and sand swirled around him from all directions. Caleb, his hair long enough to tie back, and his face covered in blood that wasn't his own, raised a sword in the air and severed the head of the cringing man at his knees. Sam watched in horror as the appendage rolled across the ground, leaving a bloody trail, first on sand, then on linoleum. "Sammy?"

The vision faded, the mask of death on his old friend's face replaced by heartfelt concern. "Caleb?"

A nod, and Caleb crawled forwards on his knees. Neither man was small, and the bathroom was cramped with only one occupant, but Caleb managed to climb over Sam's sprawled legs. "Hey. We've been looking all over for you, kiddo. You okay?"

No. Yes. Maybe. No. Not okay. Sam didn't know which answer to give, but he let Caleb wrap his arms around his shoulders, and for the first time since his nightmare began, he felt safe enough to let someone else take control.

* * *

"Dean?" John's heart broke. After living so long in despair, the hope that had blossomed in his chest shattered the fragile shell of his heart. Dean was dead. He still breathed, his skin was still soft and supple under John's fingers, and there was a heartbeat that provided a mocking theme tune for the disaster John had found in South Dakota. But _Dean, _everything he was, everything he could have been, was nowhere to be seen. 

Mary looked down on him from the motel ceiling, her eyes both terrified and lifeless. Those same eyes looked up at him from within Dean's pale, fragile face. There was nothing left inside of him but shadow. Even unconscious, even in a coma, John had always been able to sense his son and the energy that hid itself under a façade of smug coolness. He was Mary's little sunshine. At sixteen, even as Dean lay dying on a hospital bed, trapped in a world of darkness, John had still known his son was there, fighting, pissed as hell, and missing his family. The body in his arms held nothing. No fight. No life. No sign that Dean, his Dean, ever occupied it in the first place.

Jim had once asked him when everything would be too much. When _all we have _would become _everything we had_. John never expected to win this fight, which was why he pushed the boys so hard. Because he wouldn't be there to protect them. He'd be gone, and Mary's boys would have to be strong enough to fight the fight alone.

He was wrong. His boys were gone, and Mary's other half would have to fight the fight alone. He knew he should. Knew he could.

But god damnit, he didn't want to.

Their three-man army was nothing now, just a fractured vase that was once a beautiful thing, but would never again hold flowers. Dean was gone, and Sammy was broken, and oh, God, John had lost everything. _Everything he had_. He was once willing to give that. Nothing else mattered. _Everything we are. _

Dean's body trembled in his arms.

"Hush, little sunshine, I've got you."

* * *

Caleb held the door open just wide enough for the woman to see Dean's blanket wrapped form shiver in John's arms. With the ease that spoke of years of practice, the hunter spun a wildly imaginative tale involving ex-girlfriends, mental instabilities and vodka, before dispersing the disgruntled gathering with a bright, sunny smile and a further apology for the racket. 

He closed the door softly behind him, smile melting into tight concern.

"John, we have to move. Everyone in town is going to be talking about this over breakfast."

John nodded softly. Sam was huddled on the bed, his eyes fixed on his brother, silent tears breaking the still mask of his face. "Call Joshua. Have him meet us at Bobby's."

Sam flinched. Joshua was one of their father's old friends. A man who had lost his wife to a shape shifter, and a daughter to a drunk driver. A former medic in the army, Joshua owned a clinic, funded by donations, which catered exclusively to hunters.

"I need to pick up some things from my place." Caleb said softly. He lived in Lincoln, a few hundred miles from Bobby's place. John nodded.

"Make it quick. We need you back."

Caleb promised he would drive as if the devil himself were on his rear bumper. Sam threw him the Impala keys, knowing John would prefer to take his truck, and refused to abandon Dean's beloved car in a motel parking lot.

* * *

**Kingsville, Texas**

The hunt had been long and messy. Three girls had died. He'd saved the last one. She was alive. Traumatised, but alive, and he was fine with that. They had god shrinks these days, and her daddy was loaded. Ordering a beer from a barmaid who had seen better days, Jefferson Grey penned the final details of the hunt into his diary, ready to kick back for a few hours before heading up to New York. Joshua had phoned him that morning about a spate of decapitations in Tarrytown, and there was no way he planned to miss it.

Carefully sketching the sigil prominent from his last hunt, Jefferson accepted his beer with a nod of thanks.

He didn't stay in the bar for long. Just long enough to finish his entry and his beer, before heading out into the quiet parking lot. Like many hunters, the trunk of his car was an Aladdin's cave of wonders. Jefferson found what he was looking for, pulling a handful of maps out from beneath a box of holy water. As he remerged from the trunk, he seized his Glock and spun around.

The demon smiled despite the weapon, and pressed on white hand against Jefferson's forehead. Frost crystallised on the hunter's skin, spreading down his face and neck, until dark skin lay behind a spider's web of ice, and the hunter's veins froze solid in his body.

Satisfied, the demon stepped over the fallen body and fingered the Glock curiously. "Too easy." It sighed.

* * *

**Bobby's Auto Salvage Yard. Alliance, Nebraska**

They arrived before Bobby, who couldn't match John's driving time on the best of days, and had to drive three times as far to get from Jim's place. Caleb followed them for a hundred miles before starting the twelve hour round trip to Lincoln and back. He had a few things that might help Dean sitting around in his apartment back home, and the Impala needed to stretch her legs. Jim had called and promised to drive Missouri down to Alliance in Caleb's beloved Jeep, a vehicle that had probably seen better days before the Impala had ever hijacked the roads.

Sam jerked the keys out of the ignition and turned to look at his father and brother. Only a half hour into their drive, Dean had jerked himself out of his exhausted sleep, and reacted so violently John nearly drove them off the road. In the end, Sam had taken the wheel, and John had been forced to administer a shot of Ativan. Sam didn't ask why his father had a supply of the anti-anxiety drugs, and Dean had calmed suitably enough after the dose, hovering on the edge of oblivion by the time Sam pulled them into Bobby's.

Sam jumped out of the truck and circled around the front of the vehicle in order to help his father slide Dean from the seat. Despite the drugs, Dean flinched weakly at Sam's touch, forcing the youngest Winchester to look away when John frowned at them both. Pretending he had something in his eye, Sam allowed his father to scoop Dean up as if her were four again and carry him inside.

Sam tried the front door, smiling when it swung open. Bobby had never bothered with locks. No human had the guts to take on Dionysus, Bobby's monster of a guard dog, and nothing supernatural could get past the elaborate wards set up innocuously around the yard. If the Winchester family fled to Jim's for companionship and salvation, then they fled to Bobby's for safety. For their last stand.

"You remember where the first aide kit is kept?" It had been years since Sam had been to Bobby's place, but the man was a stickler for order, despite the outward appearance of the place. "Under the sink, behind-"

"-the dog biscuits and bleach, yeah. I remember."

John spared a brief, tight smile that cost him a lot, but meant the world to Sam.

"Bring it upstairs and grab some fresh towels from the bathroom. I think your brother has pulled some stitches. Again." John remembered a time in the past when he had literally had to tie Dean down after a hunt in order to give his stitches time to heal. Sam rushed to follow his father's orders. The kit was where it always was, well stocked with the essentials and the basics, as well as several bottles of morphine. Sam knew Bobby kept bottles of chloroform and ether, and hoped neither would need to be used on his brother. He had just picked out the necessary supplies, when a voice behind him made him jump, and smack his head against the top of the cabinet.

Dean, small and childlike, stood in the doorway to the kitchen. His little face was bruised, and Sam could recognise his own fingerprints in the marks around the boy's neck.

"Sammy." He whispered. "Don't leave me here."

The pain came suddenly, short and sharp. The first aide kit slipped from his fingers, and his head met the side of the kitchen table. Green eyes looked down on him in fear before blackness devoured like a flood.

* * *

**Lincoln, Nebraska**

Caleb felt her before he saw her. Then he could smell her, burning oranges and tiny white flowers that grew on the mountain. He could never remember what they were called. She hadn't aged a day, just as he hadn't. Unlike him, though, she was dead.

"Nice place you have here." She spoke to him in French, the language he had grown up with, and the lilt of her eastern accent brought back memories of haunting canticles and blood spilling over white marble.

"Sybilla." He kissed her hand, because dead or not, she was still a lady of royal lineage, and Caleb had not forgotten the wrongs he had done her. When they had first met, Sybilla had hidden her face from the world under stark cotton. Sitting at the breakfast bar in Caleb's kitchen, she had exchanged tradition for a pastel pink sundress and sandals with daisies on them. She was a clash between his past and his future, and she hadn't even called ahead.

"You've gone and gotten yourself in trouble again, Christian." She said affectionately, smiling at him like an aunt to a favoured nephew. "I warned you. I warned you what would happen if you walked for too long in their world"

"This is my world. You can't take it from me." The words lacked heat. It was a conversation Caleb had had a hundred times before. "What do you want?"

Sybilla decided to forgo an answer for a question of her own. "The boy has seen you for what you are. Soon you will not be able to hide it from them. Do you really think they can accept who you are, when it is your kind they hunt?" She sounded curious. Her dark hair spilled across her shoulders as she tipped her head in thought.

"My kind?" Caleb snapped. "I have no kind. You and yours made sure of that." The pain spread through him as it had all those years ago. Ice filling his veins, stealing everything he was. "I broke the law, I will pay for it every day, I know this. But I will not let you take them from me. They are all I have."

Sybilla rose elegantly to her feet, crossing the room to him as if she floated on air. Compassion brought her hand to Caleb's cheek, but her eyes were cool, and tempered with certainty. "He is the one, Christian. He must die."

Caleb jerked back from her hand and shook his head desperately. The priestess remained unmoved by the plea in his eyes. "You don't know for sure."

"I do." She assured him. "I have seen it. We all have. The boy _must _die. This is your penance, Caleb. This is your curse. If you do not kill him, we shall."

A five-year-old boy ran up to him in his mind, arms outstretched and eager. _"Did you get it? Did you kill the monster?"_

_"Of course I did, kiddo."_

Caleb swallowed his heartache and met Sybilla eye to eye. "I'll take care of it."

**2 miles north of E-Anna, Uruk, Modern day Iraq.

* * *

**

Dean could quite honestly say that he had never been more lost in his life. Sam must have been driving, because one simply didn't go from a beautiful national park in sunny America, to smack bang in the middle of a desert without taking a few major wrong turns.

The sand beneath his feet was creamy and rough. "I'm guessing we're not in Arizona, then." He muttered to himself, his voice lost in the wind. "Great. Just fricking great." Leave it to Sammy to get his ass possessed by a demon with frequent flyer miles.

He remembered that much. Sam was possessed. By a demon. _The _demon. Somehow, they had landed themselves in the middle of the biggest supernatural pissing contest on earth. Beyond that, though, everything was blurry, abstract. A Picasso in watercolour. One minute he was trying to connect his brother to the yellow eyed freak, the next he was spitting sand out of his mouth and wondering what in the hell had happened to them this time.

The absence of any naked, Angelina Jolie types ruled out the Heaven notion, and unless the almighty figured an eternity of wandering around the same sand dune constituted Hell, Dean figured he could safely say he was still alive.

He hoped. Because while the lost in the desert thing might not be Hell, it sure wasn't fun.

A shadow crossed his path. An old man with small, round glasses and thinning hair, with shoes far too clean to be a local walked passed Dean and headed out into the vast wilderness beyond.

"Yo!" Dean jumped in front of him and waved his arms enthusiastically. "Hey, padre, amigo… dude, can you even speak English?"

The man continued on his way, not sparing Dean the slightest glance. Frowning, because things were starting to get weird, even in Dean's book, he tried to grab the man by the elbow.

"Can you even _see _me?" His hand slid right through corduroy and bone. "Okay, that was just gross." He shuddered. "Typical. Sammy, when I find you I'm locking you in the trunk until you're thirty."

Dean stepped in a sand dune and crashed onto his knees. Apparently, he was corporeal enough to get a skinned knee. "Thirty five." He amended.

When he was younger, when their dad was still leaning and spent more time at study than he did at the hunt, Caleb used to take him and Sam out to camp under the stars. They'd pitch a tent down by the river that gave the town its name, Caleb would demonstrate his abysmal marshmallow toasting skills, and the two young boys would fall asleep to the lulling lapping of water and the lilting sound of the hunter's voice. Dean could remember all of the stories Caleb told them, often having to retell them to Sam as they curled face to face under a thin blanket in another dilapidated motel room.

Over the years, Dean had memorised stories of valour in the Crusades and the magic of Renaissance Italy -those had been Sam's favourites. Caleb had embellished tales of the American Revolution with something akin to amusement, sung rude sea shanties about the Armada, and mocked Napoleon in his own language. Dean remembered them all, much to the horror of his father, who had found Dean's giddy rendition of _Whiskey Johnnie _the perfect excuse for leaving Caleb stranded ten miles out of town on the way home from a hunt.

He whistled one of the sea shanties as he followed the man deeper into the desert, thinking to himself that this wild wilderness could have sprung to life straight out of one of Caleb's tales.

The man stopped as a second figure emerged from the billowing wind, and a slow smile spread across Dean's lips. She was _hot._ Now, if only he weren't invisible, and had his own body…

"Sybilla." The small, weedy looking guy didn't seem all that happy to see the hot chick, and Dean figured the dude was blind, stupid, or gay. Maybe a combination of the three, because _hello!_

Sybilla, her dark hair still despite the wind, looked upon the fellow as if she were seeing a bug crawling across her shoes. "Have you been having fun?" She asked.

The voice that answered made the hairs on the back of Dean's neck stand on end. Waves of irrational fear rolled over him. "Plenty. Humans are such entertainment."

"We will kill him. We won't allow you to succeed."

A laugh. "Funny, here you are, talking about killing an innocent boy, and yet _I'm _the evil one. _bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu._ Oh wait…you never studied Latin, did you." The patronising shake of the finger made Dean want to smack the guy, but Sybilla only shook her head, her closing words knocking the world out from under Dean's feet.

"We will not allow it. Samuel Winchester _must _die."

TBC

* * *

_Ok, so firstly, very sorry for the crazy nature of this chapter. I am well aware of the fact that it jumps around a lot, and for that I apologise, it simply had to be done. Next chapter will make up for it, I promise. There will be much father son bonding/yelling/blaming -the usual Winchester family special. We may (or may not) find out exactly what is happening to Dean, and Caleb may (or may not) fulfil his promise to Sybilla. I may (or may not) update tomorrow. I shall do my best. Hugs for now, and remember, the author needs her fix! _


	6. Chapter 6

_First, a huge thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, I know it was a crazy one, but thank you for sticking with it. Now, just for you guys, we shall get a few answers, and a nice dose of angst._

_On a different note, a huge, sloppy thank you to Daniel, who has to be the world's greatest ex, and possibly the only parapsychology graduate who is willing to spend several hours explaining the complexes of the human mind to a dizzy historian. He made everything sound rather flashy and cool, and will actually come at me with an axe for some of the liberties I take in this chapter and the few following. Hehe, isn't that what friends are for?

* * *

_

**Little by little the night turns around.  
Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn.  
Lotuses lean on each other in yearning.  
Under the eaves the swallow is resting.  
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.**

**Over the mountain watching the watcher.  
Breaking the darkness  
Waking the grapevine.  
One inch of love is one inch of shadow  
Love is the shadow that ripens the wine.  
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.  
The heart of the sun, the heart of the sun.**

**Witness the man who raves at the wall  
Making the shape of his questions to Heaven.  
Whether the sun will fall in the evening  
Will he remember the lesson of giving?  
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.  
The heart of the sun, the heart of the sun.**

**- Pink Floyd (1968)**

Russell Crow, and the hot chick in the flimsy toga, yeah, Dean remembered that movie. Remembered watching it in the film house, catching about twenty minutes of story, and spending the rest of it with his hand up Katie/Katherine/Louise's top. _We who are about to die, salute you. _He remembered that line, and thinks it is bullshit, because when he steps that close to death, the only salute that crosses his mind is the two-fingered kind, and even then he is more likely to reach for the shotgun first.

Which, incidentally, was an amenity he was itching for. Hot chick with a stupid name was soon to be dead chick, because hotness did not excuse anyone from wanting to kill his little brother. Didn't even come close.

Skinny library dude smirked, and Dean decided he liked him more than before.

"You won't touch the kid."

"I don't have to. Someone is taking care of it."

_Oh fuck, fuck, fuck!_

Dean didn't hang around to hear more. He spun on his heel and raced back the way he came, stumbling in the sand as he went.

* * *

It was morning again by the time Sam was able to crack his eyes open. John, Jim, Bobby and Joshua's faces twisted in a circle above him, and it would have been funny if his skull hadn't been about to explode. 

He half-expected John to look close to a nervous breakdown, but the oldest Winchester had his battle face on, and the sight of it was strangely comforting. "Jesus, Sammy." His voice was gruff like it sometimes was when he and Dean had been too noisy getting ready for school, and John had only had twenty minutes sleep.

"You even think about moving, and I'm drugging you." Sam hadn't seen Joshua since his pre-Stanford hunting days. Back then, the man had been all solid muscle and gentle hands. The only thing that had changed was the colour of the medic's hair, and the hand that checked Sam's pulse was as good for snapping necks as it was for stitching wounds.

"Dad?" Despite the warning, Sam tried to sit up. Four pairs of hands pushed him gently back down. He was out numbered by men he had grown up obeying. His situation sucked ass, as Dean would say.

Dean.

Oh, fuck, Dean.

The hands didn't stand a chance, Sam had rolled off the bed, knocking Bobby out of the way before the other hunters had realised what had happened. John caught him before the dizziness knocked him off his feet.

"Where the fuck did I put that tranquiliser?" Joshua growled. "Fucking Winchesters, all the damn same." Sam was hauled back onto the bed, but Jim moved aside enough for him to glance across the room to the second bed, the bed closest to the door that Dean had always occupied.

Sam had lost count of the number of times he had woken to see Dean sprawled out across the floral comforter. He half expected a similar vision, so the sight of Dean so still had his heart trying to claw its way up his throat.

"They were necessary, Sam." Missouri reassured the young man gently, her psychic ability hearing Sam's _'What the fuck have you done to him?' _before the words even left his brain. The only woman in the small group of hunters was sat against the headboard, stroking Dean's hair in a motherly fashion Sam would never have suspected her capable of.

Dean lay under the sheets. His wrists were wrapped in bandages several inches thick, and two sturdy belts kept them pinned to the mattress. It was only then that Sam noticed the spectacular black eye his father sported, and the three parallel scratches down Bobby's cheek.

"We had to give him a shot of haloperidol after he nearly took you old man's eye out." Joshua explained.

Sam moaned miserably. "Dean…"

"This isn't Dean." Missouri stated firmly, prompting Sam to dispel the desire to reach for the holy water. If Dean was possessed by _anything_, Sam wanted it out. Yesterday. No way in hell would he sit by and let his brother suffer through the same experiences he had. Not when he had already been hurt so much. "The body is Dean's," Missouri reached across the beds to take Sam's hand between her own, "but sweetie, there ain't nobody home. He's far away from us now."

Sam pulled away and wrapped his fingers around Dean's wrist. It seemed fragile beneath his hands, as if knowing he could actually hurt Dean had stripped away the invisibility his big brother wore like armour. "Bilocation? Astral projection?"

"None of the above." Missouri smiled at him the way he imagined his mother might have.

It was hard to meet her gaze squarely, but Sam managed. "So why are you stroking his hair then, if that isn't Dean." He didn't mean to sound hostile, but the words came out just the same.

She smiled as if the answer was obvious, which it was, in a convoluted way. "I've loved this boy since the day I met him. This is the only time he would let me comfort him the way I want to." It occurred to Sam then, that Dean might not be the only one in need of healing.

John coughed. "Sam, you need to tell us what happened." His father sounded as though he really didn't want to know the truth.

Sam swallowed. That was not a conversation he wanted to be having with his father, let alone a room full of people. His betrayal would hurt so many.

"Where should I start?" He asked, because he was a Winchester, and even if it would have killed him, Dean would have owned up to the truth, so how could Sam do any less?

Jim took a seat besides him on the bed, placing a glass of water in reach. Sam nodded around the grateful lump that rose in his throat. "The beginning," the pastor prompted, "is always a good place."

"Right. Okay."

The young hunter fell back on the training of his childhood, counting on the conditioning he had hoped to leave behind to help him reach back into the recesses of his mind. He forced himself to sit, waiting, until the first claws of memory sunk in, and the pain blossomed afresh.

_Meg was looking about as pleased with herself as was possible. Sam's face was bloody, stinging like hell, and the bitch had wrapped a rope so tight around his wrists that they had already started numbing. He tried to move, open his mouth, call to Dean. She laughed like a little girl, her blond hair spilling over one eye._

_"Oh, Sammy," She chuckled, "the games we are going to play together." _

_He twisted, saw Dean still unconscious, and held his breath until his brother's chest rose to take in air. _

_"I got you a present. You want to open it?" Meg was close enough for Sam to smell peppermint on her breath. _

_"Sure." Sam could play nice. Dean didn't have the patent on sweet talk. "You wanna untie me first?"_

_She sat on his lap, her body warm against his, and so human. "Nuh uh. How about I open it for you?" From within the fold of her yellow jacket, she withdrew a small box. A snuffbox, like the one old Mrs Hillary kept in her purse. "Take a look, Sammy, this present is just for you."_

_The black smoke rose faster than Sam could keep check of it. It burned, stung, clogged in his throat and felt as if someone was force-feeding him liquid tar. _

"Chicago?" John interrupted his face whiter than ever. "Then you, it…fuck." Sam tried to summon the sympathy needed to comfort his father, who had buried his face in his hands. Obviously, knowing that the bastard had been playing with them the whole time in the apartment- that John had _Let. It. Walk. Away. Left his boys with a monster_… he forced back the urge to let loose a hundred words of blame that he aimed at himself, but that would find a willing target in John Winchester.

The fact that it was Sam' hands, and Sam's teeth, and _just Sam,_ who had been too weak to fight the damn thing off…

Jim, Bobby, Joshua and Missouri didn't say anything. They didn't have to. John's face said it all, every line of pain etched around his eyes mirrored in the deadly stillness of Dean's body. "I'm so fucking sorry, Sammy. I could have stopped this, I should have…"

"You gonna blame Dean for what happened?" Sam asked wearily. His head still pounded, and he was so damn tired.

"What, god no!" John's horror was so abrupt it was almost humorous.

"Then shut up." The words were said without heat. John blinked all the same, looked as if he had been sucker punched. "You didn't know. You couldn't have known. Hell, it fooled Dean; he played a fricking practical joke on the damned thing."

Sam didn't want to think of the reasons it was able to fool Dean so easily, but he remembered a lot from those early days. Sitting half an arm's reach away from his brother, with Pink Floyd blaring out of the speakers. They had barely said a word to each other the whole drive, and Sam knew it was because Dean was used to his moodiness by then.

_If Sam's prison had had visible walls, he would have had beaten his fists bloody against them. Dean's eyes had been flickering for the past half hour; he was coming to after three days of drugged stupor. Meg had been waiting for them in the small, two up, two down detached house. She bounced on the balls of her feet like a child on Christmas morning, following the demon into the house, sniggering at Dean's limp form across its shoulders. The cellar had been her idea. _

_Dean's wrists had been bound by 5mm climbing rope. They had removed his jacket, boots, and socks. Emptied his pockets. Checked for hidden blades, and taken his flannel shirt just in case. _

_All three of them watched Dean wake._

_He blinked owlishly, his eyes adjusting to the darkness that would hold him for months. "Sammy?"_

_"Hello Dean." Quiet. Soft. Sam._

_They watched him shift his arms, realise he was bound. Watched the suspicion flood his eyes. "If this is about the spoon thing, then I give, I'm sorry. I know the prank stuff escalates, but don't you think this is overkill?" The usual Dean Winchester M.O. The demon loved it._

_"Yeah, Dean. This is about the prank stuff. Let me show you just how much I hate that…"_

"We got to Texas, I think." The fine details were hazy. "It," It was impossible to fight back the anger that swarmed in his belly. "It wanted me to watch, kept telling me what it was going to do."

The young hunter felt his own eyes fill in sympathy with John's, a father and son locked in an anguished revelation that neither really understood. "Dean, he…you know…he was just _Dean. _Even when I…it…no matter what. He should have got out. Could have…but he wouldn't leave me. The Daevas kept dragging him back."

What followed as a bitter, confused outpouring of the sketchy memories that tried to fit themselves together like a jigsaw puzzle missing half its pieces. The more Sam talked, the more he thought he could remember, until he couldn't stop. He had to know. He had to see. He had to _suffer._ It didn't matter to him that Jim looked ill, that Missouri looked close to tears, or that John had drawn blood in his attempt to keep his emotions in check.

"He won't leave me!" He whispered finally. The poison had been drawn from inside of him, leaving an empty shell behind. He felt as hollow as Dean looked.

Half way through his report, a small boy had circled out from behind Dean's bed, his green eyes glassy, and his bottom lip trembling.

"Of course he won't leave you, sweetheart, you won't let him." Missouri looked at the small boy, saw him, and Sam could have kissed her for it.

"You can see him?" Sam stuttered. The other hunters all looked around the room, suddenly on the alert. John was once again armed, needing to shoot something almost as much as Sam did.

"Of course I can see him!" she scoffed. "Wouldn't be much of a psychic if I couldn't now, would I?" She scowled at John and waved a threatening finger in the direction of Bobby and his shotgun. "Put those away right now. There's a child in the room."

Sam wouldn't have thought it was possible to take such a seasoned group by surprise, but there it was, clear as day. Dumbstruck, the lot of them. Little Dean opened his mouth and sobbed, the sound cutting straight through Sam's heart.

"I hate you." He whispered.

This time it was the internal pain that drove him to his knees, John catching him even as his hands clutched at his skull and stars exploded behind his eyes.

"Fuck!"

John caught his son, his fingers finding the throbbing cut above his eye that Sam had failed to compute.

The pain was even stronger the third time. Small Dean stood by his wounded counterpart and watched, impassive, as Sam crumpled into his father's hold, the pain in his head finally matching that in his heart.

From between the folds of John's thick shirt, Sam looked out on the room, and on Dean, Joshua talking in the background, and Missouri scolding a figment of Sam's tormented mind. Tears burned his cheeks as they fell, and all Sam could do was whisper Dean's final words to him.

"I hate you. I hate you. I hate you."

* * *

"That bad, huh?" John had shooed everyone from the bedroom only minutes after Sam had collapsed, and the hunters would have been lying if they said they weren't all secretly glad for the excuse to leave. They weren't an emotionally demonstrative bunch, and the Winchester held gold, silver, and bronze in the Suck It Up Olympics. To see them driven to such depths- one broken beyond repair, the other two shattering in his wake…Joshua wanted to shoot something. 

Bobby already had.

Nobody said a word about the shots that had gone off, knowing that some poor car had just been demoted from potential refit, to target practice.

Missouri and Jim fixed them all hot coffee, and it felt almost normal to crowd around Bobby's kitchen table in stunned silence.

That was how Caleb found them, each silently contemplating Sam's broken revelations…and what they meant. As much as they loved John, Mary's death had not been a matter the hunters took as a personal vendetta. She had been a civilian, a reason to fight, yes, but not a reason to die. They had differed from John in that respect.

No longer. Dean, Sam, they were two of their own. Hunters. Friends. Soldiers. They had come after Jim, they had shredded Sam's mind asunder. No one wanted to think about what they had done to Dean. If things weren't personal before, they sure as hell were going to get that way.

"Yeah." Joshua grunted, chewing on a fingernail and staring over Missouri's head to the kitchen clock beyond. "That bad."

Caleb's face vanished behind a shaky hand. "Fuck."

"Fuck." Jim echoed, and the curse coming from the pastor's lips summed their situation up with its harsh lack of eloquence.

Nobody jumped when Caleb threw his bag down by the table. _"Fuck." _The foreign hunter hissed. He raced for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Sam and Dean were alone, unprotected. John paced the hallway beyond, armed, but distant. Bobby's place was safe, after all.

Sam had removed Dean's bindings, unable to stomach them a second longer. Dean was out for the count. He wasn't a danger to anyone, and if he was, well, Sam figured he deserved a little pain.

The young psychic was sleeping fitfully in the bed opposite to Dean's. His arms tucked close to his chest, he looked about twelve.

Nothing could stop Caleb's hand from shaking as he took the safety off his gun. He tried two hands. No, still shook too badly to fire off a killing shot from the distance he was. No way would he risk a shot that wouldn't mean instant death.

Inching forwards, until his shins hit the end of the bed, Caleb tried to ignore the tears that made Sam double and swim before his eyes. He couldn't do that, either.

He tried again, third time was a charm.

He shook so badly he could hear his teeth rattle.

He was almost relieved when the barrel of a gun pressed against his skull, even if the voice owning it almost gave him a heart attack.

"Shoot my brother, and I'll kill you. Friend or not."

TBC

* * *

_Happy now? No? Didn't think so. Still, I can't answer everything at one now, can i? Hehehe. Once again, thank you for sticking with this, despite the last odd chapter, and this melodramatic outpouring. (hugs everyone and points to the review button of joy)_


	7. Chapter 7

_This chapter is a little heavy on the secondary characters, but it should answer a few of your burning questions.

* * *

"If I thought you could actually kill me, I'd have made a move already." Caleb couldn't meet John in the eye, not even when his friend knocked him clear off his feet with a right hook Tyson would have been proud of._

Bound to a chair in Bobby's kitchen, with his friends hovering in betrayed silence, Caleb wished to god Dean would pull the trigger. Just for kicks.

John's eldest had to lean heavily against his father to stay upright, and there was no question in Caleb's mind that it was that, and only that, that saved him from John Winchester's infamous bull in a china shop impression. Kudos to daddy Winchester, he'd finally figured out where his priorities should lie. Caleb was proud.

He was proud of Dean, too. In an entirely different way. There weren't many men who could hold a gun on someone for as long as Dean had when they were barely able to stand themselves. Granted, his hand shook almost as bad as Caleb's had, and he looked as if he had been hit by an 18-wheeler, but he'd never once let Caleb out of his sight. He was also the only one who didn't have betrayal written in his eyes. They swum with confusion and pain, but were lacking the stark emptiness they had shown for the past forty-eight hours..

It didn't escape Caleb's attention that whilst it had been Sam whose life was in danger, the youngest bother was so far removed from the gathering he was almost in another room. He wouldn't look at anyone, though Caleb was sure that had more to do with avoiding Dean, than any feelings Caleb's betrayal might have stirred.

"This is where you tell us that we've got it all wrong, that it wasn't what it looked like." Caleb had never wished for death more than he did at that moment. To any who didn't know him as well as Caleb did, Winchester sounded as casual as he would when ordering coffee.

It took an old friend to hear the hurt and anger lurking beneath the surface. John had regressed into full Marine interrogation mode, and the first step was to remove ones' self from sympathising with the captive.

Caleb's chin was nearly pressed against his chest as he took a breath, but he forced himself to look up and see the battered soldiers of the Winchester family. "It was exactly what it looked like." He admitted candidly. "I was sent to kill Sam."

Dean's arm drooped. He sagged weakly against his father, but John wouldn't let him sit. He shifted himself until he held most of Dean's weight against his side. Together, bruised and outmanoeuvred, Sam's guardian and his protector met the latest threat side by side.

"Sent by whom?" Jim asked, looking his age for the first time. "The demon?"

"Fuck no." Caleb spat. Yes, he was the bad guy here. And yes, he would accept the consequences of his actions, but no way in hell was he going to get lumped with that sadistic bastard.

"You were sent to stop me. Weren't you." Sam spoke up for the first time since the Nebraskan Inquisition had begun. His mouth twitched as though close to tears, but his eyes were dry and far too calm. "To stop me before it is too late."

"Jesus, Caleb!" John exploded, then lowered his voice when Dean stiffed next to him. "I think if he was still possessed we would know about it. Bobby used up his exorcism quota for the next decade."

"That isn't what he means." Sam said dully. He and Dean were locked in a silent battle about something. Sam looked resigned. Dean…Caleb couldn't place the look in Dean's eyes. It wasn't quite anger, and it wasn't fear. It was something entirely foreign. Sam laughed, harshly, almost manically. "You were sent to stop the demon's psychic soldier before he goes all Bundy."

"Not quite how I would put it." Caleb protested.

"It told me! Told me about it's plans for me. For the others like me. Like Max."

Dean flinched.

"That's why all this happened. Why it possessed me, why it took Dean. Why it…" Sam broke off. He couldn't finish, and everyone flinched when Dean fired a round through Bobby's kitchen window. "Jesus, Dean." Sam looked at his brother as if he could see nothing but the body the demon had hurt.

Dean looked as blank as he always did when dealing with something he didn't want to. He spoke to Sam for the first time since waking up. "Just shut up." He snapped, pointed the gun at Sam, and the at Caleb. "You said someone sent you. Who?"

"Her name is Sybilla. She was a priestess on Mount Sion back in the middle ages."

"I know Sybilla." Missouri spoke up, attracting the attention of every hunter in the room. Caleb almost dislocate his shoulder trying to look at her. "There's a lot of rumours about her. I think it is time you came clean."

"Always knew spending too much time with you would be bad for me." Caleb grumbled in good nature. "Right." He sighed. "Do me a favour, Dean. Shoot me."

"What?" Dean looked dumbstruck. "No."

"Kinda trying to prove a point, here, kiddo." The kid sure knew how to exasperate Caleb quicker than anyone else. Trust Dean to want to kill him, then back off when Caleb gave him the invite.

Dean looked equally as frustrated. "Can't you manage without bloodshed."

"I'm sick of people bleeding on my floor." Bobby piped up helpfully. Both Caleb and Dean looked at the badly battered floor beneath their feet.

"I don't think anyone would notice, buddy."

Bobby rolled his eyes.

"Caleb." John barked, getting impatient. Sam had slowly been hedging his way around the room, until he stood closer to his father and brother. Neither had noticed, for Caleb felt certain Dean would have backed off. Some wounds would need time to heal. A long time.

"Right. Sorry." Caleb took a breath, decided to forgo the inevitable, and plunged headfirst into the mess he had created.

"I was born in France, La Rochelle. My father, ironically enough, had lived in England, in Winchester, until the Norman invasion drove him and so many others across the channel."

There was no shortage of confusion. Dean blinked. "Tell me I'm not the only one who thinks he's missed something." He looked a little desperate. "Now I know my history sucks, but wasn't that in, like-"

"1066." Sam added, momentarily forgetting that his brother wasn't talking to him.

Dean looked as if he had forgotten as well. He nodded. "So not exactly recent time span, here."

"No shit." Joshua scoffed.

"In 1095, Pope Urban called Europe to arms, to fight in the holy lands."

"_Deus lo vult." _Sam whispered.

Caleb laughed, a hollow, bitter sound. "God willed it, alright. Anyway, I was young, younger than you were when you went to Stanford, Sammy. And I wasn't a nice person. Not by a long shot. There was a group of us. We basically used circumstances as an excuse to plunder and kill."

"You went all Viking?" Dean asked.

"Something like that." Shame didn't begin to describe the feelings those memories invoked in him. His youth was no excuse, he that none which would validate the evil he had wilfully committed. "Shortly after Jerusalem was taken by the crusaders, we heard word of a treasure in the mountains that surpassed all others. We'd grown bored, so we...persuaded a Saracen to guide us to the treasure." Tortured and blackmailed. Caleb had held the knife to the guide's throat himself. "Most of my party didn't survive the trip through the desert. Those of us that did found only a temple built into the sand."

"What, no Indiana Jones vault of gold?" Dean was having a hard time melding the Caleb he knew with the violent murder the hunter was describing. Sam's face morphed from sweet to cruel and back again. His father's arm tightened as he sagged further. Too many lies. Too much betrayal. He wasn't sure he could take any more.

"No." Caleb whispered. "The treasure was a child. Just a boy, maybe nine years old. Sybilla was his guardian, her and three others. When we found nothing we deemed worthy of our hardships, we-"

"You killed them." Sam recalled his vision in the motel bathroom. "You slaughtered innocents." The kid's eyes were wide. Horrified. Hunters didn't do that. Caleb had recruited them all, in one way or another. He was supposed to be whiter than white. He was Clint fricking Eastwood with the white hat and pearl handled gun.

"I killed the boy myself. Sybilla was dying, and I mocked her." She had struggled, and damnit, Caleb could still remember how much he had enjoyed it. "So she cursed me, she and another priest. I am to live forever with the stain of my sins."

John's voice was cold. "Sounds like you got off pretty easy."

Caleb refused to acknowledge the burning in his eyes. "Seems so. I'll never die. Never get sick. Never grow old. Just live forever, watching the world go by. Yeah, I thought it was a pretty sweet gig at first, myself. For the first seventy years. Then it got a little tiresome, you know? But hey, I was youthful, attractive, I healed so damned fast, injuries were just an excuse for a vacation. I could do anything I wanted. So I did. I joined armies, toppled cities, destroyed countries. Then one day everything caught up with me, and I realised that forever is a fucking long time. The guilt that I had been running from sunk it's teeth in. The century that followed was hell. I didn't eat. Didn't sleep. I went back to the temple in the mountains, and Sybilla was there."

She had been as lovely as the day he had killed her. Dark and beautiful, her power as intoxicating as wine to a man who had lived a year without water. "I begged her to let me die. I was a coward. She refused me. Said it was too late, but that I could ease my pain if I truly wanted to."

Out of all of them, Sam was the only one who had dared inch forward, the young man kneeing besides the chair Caleb was bound to, sympathy in his eyes. The foolish child thought that he cold understand Caleb's guilt. The hunter didn't know whether to slap the boy, or embrace him.

"The boy I killed was special. A psychic, like you, Sammy. In killing the priests, I killed the people who protected him."

"Protected him from what?" Sam leaned forwards, his chest touching Caleb's knees.

"From the demon."

"What?" John almost dropped Dean in his sudden spark of anger.

Tearing his eyes from Sam to look at John was harder than he could have imagined, but Caleb managed it. "The demon chooses them as children, possesses them, breaks them. Sybilla told me that he was special. That he, out of all the others like him, had to be saved from the devil. She told me that there would be more, and if I protected them, saved them from the demon, then I would payback some of the wrong I had done."

There had been a subtle shift during Caleb's confession. Dean struggled as John's knees went weak. "Bastard."

The bound man looked away in shame. "I did as she ordered. I found the children the demon wanted, and I protected them, or as many as I could. Those it got to first…I killed them."

Sam looked stricken. "Oh, god."

Both men looked up sharply. Even injured, Dean could pack a punch, though the power it lacked stung Caleb far more than the blow itself. Sam's older bother, his protector, towered over Caleb like a mythical figure. "And Sam?" he roared. "Is that why you tried to kill him? Because the demon got to him? Corrupted him?"

John was white, and Sam trembled by Caleb's knees. Dean could barely hold himself upright, but his rage and his fear drove him on until Caleb opened his mouth to deliver the killing blow.

"Yes. The demon got to him. Possessed him. Broke him, and if he doesn't die, then you have no idea how bad things are going to get."

TBC

* * *

_Stay tuned for the next chapter in which Hunters become the Hunted. Caleb gets another black eye, and Sam and Dean have a little…chat._


	8. Chapter 8

_First, sorry for the delay in posting. It has really been the week from hell. I can count the number of hours I have slept in the last five days on my fingers, and still have a few digits left over. (sniffs) It is short, I know…but I finally have a little time off, so we'll get back into the swing of things quickly. In the mean time, Dean recommends Metallica's Ride the Lightning CD as a soundtrack to this fic so far. Hehe.

* * *

_

Sunrise saw Dean sitting on the rickety wooden steps of Bobby's porch. The rising red orb of light staining the hulking metal shells and banishing the shadows of the night. So many times in his life Sam could recall the methodical movement of Dean's hands on a gun. It was one of his first childhood memories, which said a great deal about their early years.

With his back to Sam, and dressed again in a thick red and white flannel shirt, Dean didn't look as if he had spent the last four months being tortured by a demon wearing his brother's skin. It made Sam hesitant to move any closer, knowing that as soon as he saw the sun touched face of his brother, that safety net of familiarity would crumble.

The hunter in Sam told him to back off. Dean was dealing with things in his own way, and in time, he would come to Sam. The brother in him felt torn. He knew Dean better than anyone. He knew his brother and his stoic nature. Left to his own devices, Dean would just build another fortification over the rubble of its predecessor. But Sam knew that a castle built on uneven ground would only stand strong for so long. Better perhaps if he forced Dean into clearing away the debris first.

"You always were shit at sneaking up on people." Sam smiled. Trust Dean to sense his little brother's turmoil and seek to bridge the gap between them. "You remember that skin walker in Ohio? You tripped over your own feet, and it nearly made a Twinkie out of you."

"I was fourteen." Sam huffed, taking a seat on the steps, careful to leave a distance between himself and Dean. Dean had yet to look at him. Sam wasn't sure if that were a bad thing or not. "And I'd just hit a growth spurt. I suddenly had beanpoles for legs. They got in the way." Sam hadn't been the most graceful teenager. It had annoyed him at the time, especially because Dean had never seemed to hit that awkward, lanky stage. To Sam's mind, one minute his brother had been small and childlike, the next he was fully-grown, muscular, and possessing a catlike grace neither Sam nor their father shared.

"I remember when you got taller than me. Christ that pissed me off. Got over it. Thought I could get over anything. Guess I can."

Sam frowned. It seemed these days as if the only topics Dean ever spoke to him about were the hunt, the car, and _dude, get your fricking hands off my cassettes._ Reminiscing usually required some form of alcohol. It was possible his brother was still on a buzz from whatever cocktail of drugs Joshua had pumped into him, but somehow Sam knew it went deeper than that.

"So you don't hate me then?" The words were light hearted but even Sam could detect the vulnerability in his own voice. Dean, with his built in Sam-o-Metre would find it impossible to miss.

Bruises ringed Dean's eyes, deep shadows that made his gaze so intense; Sam had to force himself to maintain eye contact. He tried a smirk, a hint of the old Dean peaking through the cracks in his mask. "You're still using the Get Out Of Hate Free card you scored after hitting me up with those Metallica tickets."

Sarcasm. Once Sam might have cuffed his brother upside the head. He no longer dared. Just frowned and wished to god the demon had taken the time to beat some sense into his erstwhile sibling, instead of just beating him sense_less_. "That's bull, and you know it. Christ, Dean." Sam snapped his fingers an inch from Dean's face, eliciting a startled flinch. Dean scowled, but Sam wasn't done. "You can't stand to be near me. You _told me _you hated me, damnit."

Dean blinked in confusion. "I did?" Sam nodded. "Was that before, or after I went all Randle McMurphy on you?"

"After."

Dean made an 'oh' type nod before sighing. "I don't hate you Sammy. I'm just…"

"Confused?" Sam put in gently, silently contemplating the ironic turn of events that had him rejoicing at the hated nickname.

"Pissed!" Dean exploded, his fingers curling around the weapon in his hands. The last time he had ever heard Dean so angry, back before Stanford, the motel mirror had ended up in pieces, and it had taken Sam three hours to pick all the glass out of Dean's knuckles. The weakness that should have forced his brother into bed rest sapped his ability to vent.

And Dean liked to vent. It didn't happen very often. The pressure inside of him was always well controlled, but occasionally he needed to let of stream. Hence the drinking. And the sex. And the occasional bouts of extreme violence. Disabled from all three, Dean was left with only one outlet, and Sam willingly, happily, stepped forwards to take up the slack.

"With me?" He could take pissed. A pissed Dean was a predictable Dean.

Sam jumped up to his knees when Dean forced himself to stand, leaning heavily on the banister. "Fuck, no." Hissed Dean, his whole body shaking, whether with weakness or rage, Sam was afraid to guess. He held out one hand hesitantly, ready to catch Dean if he fell, but unwilling to force contact between them.

"The demon? Believe me, Dean. We're all gunning for the bastard here. There's a fricking queue for his head. Between the three of us there won't be enough left of him to sit on a thumb tack."

In turning his head to look at Sam, Dean forced himself off balance, held upright by sheer willpower alone.

"Me!" The word was short, sharp. Desperate. An explosion that shook the foundations of the world Sam lived on. Of all the stupid, irrational things…but of course- two perfect words for summing up his brother. Instead of laying the blame where it was deserved, on Sam and the demon, Dean went and blamed himself.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid-

"I fucking _failed,_ Sam! You, Dad. God, everyone. Protect Sammy, hell, I couldn't even protect _myself._ Damnit!" The willpower faded, and he would have dropped to his knees if Sam hadn't lurched forwards and caught him. Sam's fingers brushed the soft skin on the underside of Dean's wrist, and that minute contact was enough to kick Sam's tail spinning psychic abilities into action.

Working as it had so many times under the demon's command, Sam wasn't aware of what was happening until he felt something inside Dean give way, and images filled his head faster than he could interpret them. Through the pounding of blood in his ears, Sam heard Dean gasp. It sounded a hundred miles away, and the pain behind his eyes was so intense, it took a second for Sam to recognise the noise as something coming from Dean, and not from his own head.

The images vanished as quickly as they came, leaving Sam cold, sweating, and already missing the pulse pounding adrenaline that had pumped through his blood. Feeling increasingly sick, he realised that the body in his arms trembled violently.

The demon had done that to his brother.

_Sam _had hurt him without even meaning to, unable to control the abilities that were slipping from him and spiralling out of control.

With dread and guilt -anguish- circling above like vultures, Sam gently eased them both back down to the porch, slowly untangling himself from Dean in order to give the other hunter the personal space he always craved.

It came as a surprise then, when instead of pulling away at the first opportunity, Dean held on, still shaking, his head buried in Sam's stomach. He wasn't sobbing, afraid or clinging, but simply holding on, overwhelmed.

Needing comfort almost as much as he needed to give it, Sam curled over his brother, sheltering them both, his cheek against Dean's soft hair. Even huddled as he was, simply being close to Dean made Sam feel safe. The older hunter wouldn't have lasted two rounds with a paralysed turtle, and flinched at sudden movements, but he was still Dean. Whatever darkness had gripped him before had faded. Dean was safe. Dean was home. Dean needed protecting from Sam.

In the face of Dean's dry eyes, Sam felt the need to shed a tear for them both.

* * *

John watched them through the window Dean had obliterated earlier in the day. The headache that had wrapped itself around his brain was no better for the aspirin Jim had forced him to take, nor for the whiskey Bobby had washed them down with. Standing by and watching his sons in pain had only added force to the sledgehammer attacking his skull.

Protect his boys. Mary's boys. The charge was written in his blood, and was perhaps his biggest failure. He was a hunter, a leader, and a father. Why could he excel at the first two, only to fail so completely at the last hurdle? It burned him.

The rising summer sun had wrapped his children in a golden glow, and from a distance, John could almost pretend that they were fine, safe, ordinary boys. Boys who had grown up with teddy bears and train sets instead of handguns, who weren't handed the car keys at eleven and told _just drive, Dean. Get us out of here, _before their father passed out in the back seat.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" John had been left alone with Caleb. A foolhardy move, in his opinion. Joshua was driving Missouri to Lawrence, for a meeting she would not divulge. Jim and Bobby had begun the exhausting task of re-enforcing the hard worn protection spells around the yard. John's hands weren't stead enough to do either. It irked him.

The rouge hunter was still bound to the kitchen chair, having made no attempt at escape. Both his eyes were shadowed from Dean's second right hook, and the deep blue gaze was strangely sad. "You want to protect them, you'd give anything. But damn it John, if you do, you'll be undoing everything you have ever fought for. Everything you have ever bled for, everything _they _have ever suffered for."

A chair scattered as John spun, turning his back on the silent silhouette of his sons to face the man who had taught him to fear the dark, and everything in it. "What, Caleb? What will happen? You're so fucking sure Sam's going to bring about the apocalypse, yet you've told us nothing. Damn it all, he's my son! You tried to kill my child. A boy who has fucking worshiped you since he was old enough to ask 'when are we going to see uncle Caleb again?'"

"Do you know what I would give for it to be anyone _but _Sam?" Caleb shouted right back, showing an anger John had unconsciously wanted to see. The cold, brutal truth had been delivered in the appropriate manner, but he needed to see something. Caleb was his fucking mentor. They'd bled for each other, gotten drunk together, driven thousands of miles through wind, sleet, snow and heat waves. Caleb had been one of the few he had trusted with the boys…ha, what a fricking joke that had turned out to be!

"Did you know? About Dean? Did you know the demon would use Dean to get to Sam?" Cold fury uncurled itself and reared a head ugly enough to stop the dead in their tracks. If Dean figured it, and John strongly suspected he did, then the knowledge would break his eldest far more efficiently than anything that bastard could have done. Dean's life had one meaning, and one meaning only. To be the downfall of his own cause for existence…

"God no." Caleb was white, and John couldn't help but believe him. Couldn't help but _need _to believe him. "No John, I swear to god I didn't know it would come after Dean. You have to understand, this thing is a nasty son of a bitch, but it's old, really old. And smart. It never has the same M.O. Never hunts in the same place twice- I had no idea that you were hunting it, that it had killed Mary. God!" He laughed bitterly. "It was my job to _protect_ Sam from the damn thing; you really think I would have helped you as much as I did if I'd have known?"

John didn't know. Maybe. Yes.

"You telling me you've never tried to take it out before? You're immortal." A passport to unlimited hunting if he'd ever seen one. It explained why Caleb took what seemed at the time to be irrational risks. Risks that had saved John's ass. And his boys'.

Caleb nodded sharply, a touch of irony tilting the corner of his lips.

"Yeah, once. Yorkshire, England. End of the nineteenth century. One minute we're squaring off in a cave in July 48, the next thing I know, it's winter, and thirty years have passed. I heal fast, John, real fast, but the bastard did a serious number on me. Skulls aren't meant to be pancake shaped."

The visual made John's skin crawl. He opened his mouth to say something, try and offer some sort of condolence, but was saved by the ringing if his cell. Recognising Joshua's number, John flipped it open and took the call.

_"John." _Joshua's tinny voice echoed around the kitchen, setting both hunters on edge. _"I just got a call from a friend of mine. Jefferson is dead."_

God. No.

He couldn't form the words. Couldn't think. Fuck!

_"It gets worse…fuck, John…someone, something, it went to the Roadhouse. Jesus, it killed them. Ellen, Jo, Ash…all of them. Seventeen hunters in all."_

John grunted, couldn't do anything else, his fingers barely steady enough to end the call. He met Caleb's gaze across the kitchen, and he was slicing through his bonds a second later.

The battle lines were drawn. They needed all the soldiers they could get.

TBC

* * *

_There, that wasn't too evil an ending, was it? No lives on the line, no immediate danger/angst/owies. I think we may have even started a little healing process. What fun is that? (wanders off to undo all the nice healing). In the time being, now that I have some downtime, I plan to get a little fic reading done. I've been severely lacking for a good few weeks, so if anyone has any recommendations, send 'em my way!_

_Till next time, hugs, cookies, and please review!_


End file.
